


Whatever You Can Dream Up Next

by spacekc929



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (not between Alastor and Draco), Aftercare, Age Difference, All the fantasies, Anal Sex, BDSM, Bestiality Fantasy, Blood, Branding, Caning, Chains, Cockwarming, Consensual Invasion of Privacy, Consensual Kink, Consensual Sexual Slavery Roleplay, Crying, Crying During Sex, Daddy Kink, Deepthroating, Dry Sex, Exhaustion kink, Face Punching, Face Slapping, Fear Play, Fisting, Found Family, Frotting, Hair Pulling, Human Furniture, Invasion of Privacy, Kinky use of stinging hexes, Leashes, M/M, Object Insertion, Oral Sex, Outdoor Sex, Painful Sex, Panic Attacks, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Power Exchange, Punching, Rape Fantasy, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Sadism, Size Difference, Size Kink, Spanking, Therapy, Under-negotiated Kink, Watersports
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:28:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 57,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25379893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacekc929/pseuds/spacekc929
Summary: Alastor Moody is fifty-one years old when he accepts a scrawny, traumatized, eighteen-year-old Death Eater into his home through Harry Potter’s new pet project, the Young Parolees Initiative.AKA, the obscenely cross-generational Draco/Moody BDSM romance no one ever asked for, featuring a protective, obsessive, sadistic Alastor whose capacity for tenderness is outmatched only by his depraved imagination, and a Draco with trauma who wants nothing more than to be Alastor’s good boy.[Set in an AU where Moody survives Book Seven. Updates on Sundays and Wednesdays.]
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody
Comments: 22
Kudos: 105





	1. June 2000

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a chronological fic. For reference, Draco came to live with Moody at the end of December 1998, and each chapter is titled with the month and year so you can get a sense of what stage of the relationship they're at. 
> 
> A more broad note about this fic is to please heed the tags. Alastor and Draco have an intense, consensual BDSM relationship. It's not exactly a fluff-fest and both Alastor and Draco are all kinds of fucked up. This relationship is not meant to represent an ideal of any kind.

Today, as he often does, Alastor has the urge to be mean to Draco. It’s quite easy to be mean to him, for Alastor is a natural sadist and Draco naturally loves to take whatever new mistreatment Alastor can think up.

It’s the night before Draco’s twentieth birthday, and the man in question lounges on a stool at the kitchen table, skimming the Evening Prophet with a look in his eyes—thinking hard, perhaps even plotting. After more than a year and a half living with Alastor in the cottage, Draco is regaining his confidence, and with it his ability to scheme. In public, whenever Draco says something smart and dignified, Alastor likes to ruffle his hair with a proud grin. He’s my ward, Alastor always tells people. Of course he’s brilliant. He’s like a son to me.

Today, Alastor walks up behind Draco and cards his fingers through Draco’s hair. Draco tilts his head back just slightly, a soft grin on his face. Alastor spreads his hand across Draco’s forehead and gathers Draco’s head back against his paunch. His other hand rests on Draco’s shoulder, massaging it slightly. “What’s in the news tonight?” Alastor asks, his tone deceptively friendly.

“Nothing really, Alastor.

Alastor grins, though it’s not a particularly comforting one. “Come now, laddie, there must have been somethin’ in the paper, or else they would’n’a wasted the money to print it.” The hand on Draco’s shoulder drifts slowly up to his throat.

“Um.” Alastor squeezes the pale column just slightly, his thumb pressing against the nape of Draco’s neck, his index finger caressing the Adam’s apple—pressing his fingernail in just a bit, then relaxing. “A-a Muggle was Obliviated this afternoon, near D-diagon,” Draco manages to breathe out amidst the manipulations. “Some people came out of the Alley with, um, fuck, p-potions ingredients—” Draco’s breath hitches as Alastor squeezes more insistently on his windpipe.

“What else, Draco?” Alastor asks. Cheerful.

“I-I can’t remember. . .”

“Ah. I keep sayin’, Constant Vigilance. Perhaps I oughta spank yeh for forgetting what yeh just read. It’s pure carelessness, boy.”

Draco tries to tilt his head back again, but Alastor won’t let him. Alastor leans down instead and puts his mouth against Draco’s ear. Draco shivers, probably having predicted the question Alastor plans to ask. “Can I be mean to you today, my sweet boy?”

Draco doesn’t hesitate. “Yes, Daddy.”

In public, Draco calls him ‘Alastor’ or ‘Sir,’ and he says intelligent things and impresses old politicians and plays the picture of the devoted ward, the reformed Death Eater who learned from ‘that crazy Auror’ and the Young Parolees program how to be Good. But here in this house that they’ve shared for the better part of two years, Draco calls him Daddy to signify that he wants Alastor to raze him with his depraved imagination. With Alastor, Draco is a Good man, but with Daddy, Draco gets to be a good boy.

Alastor’s right hand retreats from Draco’s throat, only to rejoin the hand on Draco’s head and push downwards with remorseless pressure until Draco’s face is crushed into the table. Alastor leans over and rests his entire weight on Draco’s back. “Stand up,” Alastor commands. Draco can’t, not really, not with Alastor gleefully pinning him to the table under his considerably-heavier frame. But Draco is nothing if not obedient to Daddy, and he does eventually manage to sort of slide sideways off his stool and stumble forward, scraping his cheek on the wood and lifting his bottom directly into Alastor’s cock.

“I have a fun idea,” Alastor says conversationally, settling over Draco’s back and thrusting his hardness up against Draco’s clothed backside. He enjoys the slight quiver in Draco’s thighs as Draco struggles not to collapse. “Do you want to hear it?”

The unspoken question: _are you up for something very painful, this evening?_

“Please, Daddy, tell me,” Draco say, though his voice is a bit muffled by the tabletop.

“It goes like this. You’ll pull down your trousers. You’ll use your hands to hold open your cheeks and show me that pretty hole. And then you’ll stay perfectly still while I blast it with Stinging Hexes.” Alastor pauses, but not long enough to give Draco time to get cold feet. “Not just a couple, mind you—I’ll get yeh nice and tender. Then I’ll take my wand, and put it inside ye, and tenderize your insides too. Even yer prostate.”

Draco can’t hold back a whimper at that. Alastor thinks there might be genuine fear there, which thrills him. “I’ll sting it so much your prostate will swell and become so sensitive that nothing will be able to touch it without causing a heap of misery. But that won’t be the end,” Alastor continues, aware that he sounds exuberant. “After you’re warmed up, I’ll cane you a bit—just across the buttocks, maybe twelve stripes. Maybe fifteen. I’ll give you a couple extra licks right on your hole, too.”

“D-Daddy, I’m not sure I can handl—”

“I forgot one part.” Alastor snickers a bit when Draco gasps, and he presses his body down as hard as he can against Draco, boxing Draco in with hardened knees and leaving no space for Draco between himself and the uncompromising hardness of the wooden table. He’ll bruise Draco with his force, and maybe, if he pushes hard enough, compress Draco into something chimerical, rearrange Draco’s insides and outsides so thoroughly that Draco is not recognizable as anything but a sponge for Alastor’s vehemence and concupiscence. Alastor wants to occupy every inch of him, owning every breath, every slap, every cry. Alastor wants to creep around the edges of Draco’s bedroom, use his eye to find out what’s inside Draco’s armoire, what’s underneath his clothes, what’s secreted away below his parietal bone. Alastor wants to uncover everything that’s there that he hasn’t yet found and steal it for himself.

“I forgot to tell yeh, that before any of the pain, I plan to make you come. Twice, with my hand only. Real rote-like. Just to make sure you can’t come when I fuck yeh. And then I will fuck yeh,” Alastor’s breath hitches, “and you’ll probably cry it’ll hurt so bad. I know exactly how to find your prostate, sweetheart, and I am going to hit it on every thrust, just to hear you squeal. Because I want to be mean tonight, Draco,” Alastor finishes, his voice gaspy with excitement. “And I want you to cry. Do you want that too?”

Draco doesn’t, or can’t, respond, so Alastor lazily thrusts his cock up against Draco’s backside and lands a stinging slap on Draco’s hip. “Say yes,” Alastor growls into Draco’s ear.

“Daddy, it’ll hurt so much,” Draco complains. But Alastor knows Draco is just playing up the plaintive edge to his tone to wind him up. He has something he can say when he’s not in the mood; and besides, an unhappy Draco is never confident enough to whine.

“I know. I want yeh to hurt.”

There’s an unspoken promise: _I’ll hold you tightly afterwards. Let you cry as much as you want. Own every piece of you and every breath. You’ll be mine, my good boy._

Draco smiles.

***

When Alastor feels satisfied, he withdraws his cock from Draco with an indolent squelch. Draco hasn’t passed out, but his body remains limp, face-down on the bed. Thick, vindictive red impressions sully Draco’s butt and thighs—twenty-five or so horizontal decorations from Alastor’s cane. (The weeping when Alastor says, ‘Not quite done’ after fifteen was almost enough to get Alastor off right then.) Several scores from Alastor’s fingernails run in roughly parallel lines down Draco’s sides. Alastor can’t see if Draco came or not, and figures he didn’t, but he’s a bit curious so he grasps Draco’s shoulder and pushes him onto his side like a doll. His cock is as inert as his exhausted body. “You didn’t come,” he remarks, taking Draco’s member in hand and stroking it a few times, to no avail.

“H-hurt,” Draco mutters. “Couldn’t get hard.” Draco had begged, implored Alastor to stop hitting his throbbing prostate. But maybe you’ll come again, Alastor taunted. Please. I can’t. Well let’s keep tryin’ anyway, sonny.

Alastor murmurs a quick spell to clean himself and Draco off before wrapping himself completely around Draco, front-to-front, Draco’s lax limbs putting up no protest. “Ah, laddie,” Alastor mutters into Draco’s hair. A small sob emerges from Alastor’s arms, so Alastor strokes Draco’s head softly. “You were perfect,” Alastor croons. “You submitted to me so well, sweetheart. All those Stinging Hexes. And twenty-five with the cane, when I promised you fifteen. You must be so tender, inside and out.”

Draco keeps crying, but his arms untangle from Alastor’s grip and resituate themselves around Alastor’s back and shoulders. Trying to pull himself closer to Alastor, reduce the space between them as much as possible, trying to burrow inside him. “D-daddy,” Draco hiccups.

“I’m here, sweetheart. Just cry it out.”

They lay like that for a few minutes before Draco speaks again, more composed now. “It hurt so bad. It was like, I don’t know. Like you shoved a fire poker in there.”

Alastor chuckles. “You’ll get me all excited again if you keep sayin’ things like that, dear heart. Maybe I will shove up a poker up there—that’s a great idea.”

Draco shivers, but he doesn’t pull away. “You think it’s funny.” It isn’t an accusation. Just an acknowledgment.

“Course it’s funny. I’m always dreaming up new and exciting ways to hurt you—it’s humorous, innit, for you to suggest more?”

“You just like it when I’m sobbing.”

Draco already knows the answer to that question, of course, but Alastor likes saying it anyways. “Your tears are ecstasy to me.”

Perhaps a normal person would have fled in terror, but Draco huddles only closer, and Alastor replies with a gentle stroke of his hand down Draco’s naked back. Draco can’t seem to resist a small tremor. “God, you’re beautiful,” Alastor mutters, feeling his excitement rise again. Almost fifty-three years old but this perfect boy and his unerring submission to Alastor’s sadism never fails to arouse him. “You should stop me from doing this,” says Alastor as he dips his head to mouth a kiss on Draco’s pristine, bare, alabaster collarbone. “You should tell me ‘no,’ every once in a while,” says Alastor as he grips Draco’s hair and wrenches Draco’s head to the side and opens up more space on Draco’s shoulder for abuse.

Draco doesn’t say anything.

“You know I’m evil,” Alastor continues, sinking a deep bite into Draco’s flesh and eliciting a pained groan. Draco’s collarbone and shoulders and neck are already littered with love bites from today, yesterday, whenever. Some of them have scarred, branding Draco as Alastor’s forever.

“N-not evil,” Draco gasps back. Alastor soothes this newest bite with a soft suck, which makes Draco whimper a bit.

“Aren’t I? I spend most of my free time imagining the next awful thing I can do to you, how I can hurt you worse than I hurt you last time. And when I’m not hurting you—or wishing I was—I’m using my eye to look through your walls, your blankets. Your clothes. Watching you masturbate yer pretty cock in the shower when you don’t know I’m watching, invadin’ every inch of your space and takin’ you over, bit by bit. Tryin’ to own yeh.”

Alastor punctuates that thought by jamming one rough finger inside of Draco, drawing the digit in and out in a punishing rhythm, scraping the sides of Draco’s nearly-dry hole. Draco clenches his nails into Alastor’s back, his breath coming out in small, overwrought huffs. “O-own me?”

Though Alastor knows it could be a clarification, he’s pretty sure it’s a request.

“I already hurt my fucktoy a lot today,” Alastor continues, “I messed you up so bad inside you couldn’t even feel pleasure, and I thought that was delightful. And now I’m wonderin’ if I can do it again just a few minutes later. Isn’t this evil? That I’m already thinking, how can I get yeh to cry again?”

Perhaps Draco had been manfully trying to hold his tears back, or perhaps the fingering is exceptionally painful, but he breaks into a fresh round of hiccupping sobs. Alastor withdraws the finger and uses it to wipe some of Draco’s new tears from his cheek. Then insinuates that finger between Draco’s lips. “Should it really be this hot, to me, to see yeh cleaning up yer own tear-and-shit mess?”

Draco’s tongue willingly laves the digit for a few moments, tears still leaking from his eyes in a steady stream. Alastor removes the finger and wipes more tears with it before returning to Draco’s hole. “Sweet Merlin, I want to fuck you again,” Alastor whispers into Draco’s ear, bucking recklessly against Draco’s front and cramming the finger back inside. “I’m imaginin’ sticking yeh again with my ugly cock, just my cum and these tears as lube and I’ll hit your prostate on every thrust on purpose just to hurt you. Again. Let me?”

And where any other person might have used their safeword or screamed or even Disapparated to Norway, Draco clings to Alastor and begs, “P-p-please, Daddy.”

It’s a long, agonizing second fuck for Draco. Staying on their sides, Alastor hooks Draco’s ankle above Alastor’s shoulder, reveling in knowing that for all his leanness, Draco isn’t especially flexible and this position stretches him towards his limits. Alastor tangles one of his hands in Draco’s hair, and the other he uses alternately to pull Draco’s hips into his thrusts and smack Draco’s injured arse in an unpredictable, uncontrolled rhythm. Alastor’s dick seeks out Draco’s prostate like a Muggle guided missile, unfailingly hitting his weary target on every advance.

After nearly fifteen minutes of that position, Alastor is feeling a bit tired, so he repositions himself on his back with Draco straddling his thighs. “Finish me,” he growls into Draco’s ear. Draco whimpers and tries to ride—he has to place his hands on Alastor’s chest to keep himself balanced. Alastor sits back with his hands behind his head, watching gleefully as Draco lifts, drops, repeats, his face contorting with pain both on exit and reentry. The turgid veins of Alastor’s dick grate Draco’s walls so that each assault must feel like a Stinging Hex renewed. “You’re so pretty,” Alastor coos. Alastor isn’t, pretty that is, and the contrast between Draco’s beauty and Alastor’s distastefulness is, as always, a certain aphrodisiac. “My beautiful, darling boy.”

Draco grunts, attempting to move his hips but failing. He’s totally depleted. He collapses on Alastor’s chest, heaving. “Daddy, I can’t,” he cries. His tears flow into Alastor’s coarse chest hair.

Alastor is both irritated at the interruption and excited about the possible chastisements he can dole out for Draco’s disobedience. He digs both sets of his nails into the meat of Draco’s thrashed bottom, forcing out a small squeak, and then fists a handful of hair on the back of Draco’s head to jerk up his head. “You will,” he spits, some spittle landing in Draco’s eye. “Or I’ll get that poker we talked about, and I’ll break it across the backs of your thighs, and then shove both pieces up inside you. No, actually, I’ve a better idea. I’ll rape yeh with it first. It’s covered in ash, scum. I’ve never cleaned that thing since I moved into this house thirty-odd years ago. It’s in perfect shape to mess yeh up inside. For how long do yeh think yer prostate could handle a filthy metal pole? Fifteen minutes, a half hour? A steel poker doesn’t get tired like I do, I’ll remind yeh.”

Draco tries, the poor boy, to lift his hips at the threat. He’s not sure whether Alastor will actually carry it out or not; his thighs tremble and twitch with frantic effort. Alastor, who had come barely thirty minutes prior, would never achieve release this way. “P-p-please don’t,” Draco whines. “I’m trying.”

“Not tryin’ very hard, hm?” Alastor strokes the length of Draco’s back, lands a slap on Draco’s backside. Draco keens, but he can’t increase his speed. Sweat and tears roll down his cheeks, indistinguishable.

“D-Daddy!” Draco’s face disappears into Alastor’s chest again and his hips roll sluggishly. “I’m sorry, please, I’m trying to be good,” he babbles. His hands open and close on Alastor’s upper arms spasmodically. “P-please have mercy on me!”

Those words are the sweetest ambrosia to Alastor, and they reignite his energy. He clutches Draco to his chest tightly, angling his cock up into Draco’s passageway with several short, sharp thrusts. “You beg so prettily,” Alastor spits into Draco’s ear, and while his mouth is near he’s not able to resist rendering a painful bite to the cartilage. “Always begging me to do all the work. To hurt you more.”

“Nnnh!” An agreement or a disagreement, Alastor doesn’t know or care. But Alastor is done talking, and it’s too hard to thrust into Draco from below, so he flips them over and lays efficiently into Draco from above. In this position, gravity does most of the work. Draco howls and bawls, which does nothing but spur Alastor on for the eleven excruciating minutes that Alastor manages to hold out. When he comes, it’s not by choice: really, as if he’s ever had choice when Draco’s spread beneath him, whimpering pitifully and clenching his feverish walls, physically pleading for Alastor’s progeny.

This time, after unloading into Draco again, Alastor collapses on top of his boy, not bothering to hold up his weight. Alastor can feel the warmth of Draco’s panting breaths against his pectoral muscles. It’s charming, the tiny, constrained swell of Draco’s ribcage as his lungs valiantly fight to expand and contract underneath the oppression of Alastor’s body mass.

“You did so good,” Alastor mutters once he finally gets his breath back. “You are so good. Such a good boy. My good boy.”

Draco says something, but it’s muffled. Alastor rolls off to Draco’s side. “D-daddy,” Draco mumbles. “Please?” Alastor looks down and laughs—Draco’s cock is half-hard.

“You do like being treated like this,” Alastor says, matter-of-fact, as he grabs Draco’s dick in an unpleasantly punitive grip. “I never doubted it. You like being my good boy. My fuck doll. You want everything I can think to dish out.” Draco nods his head jerkily.

It takes a few minutes of cruel, punishing strokes to get Draco to full hardness; judging by the pained, pathetic sounds coming out of Draco’s mouth, his cock is not on board with a third orgasm. “Maybe I should get the poker now,” Alastor jokes. “And make you come while it’s inside you.”

Another wordless groan. Draco’s hips begin to jerk helplessly, so Alastor strokes harder. “I’ll do that one day,” Alastor promises, rubbing his thumb through the precum adorning the head of Draco’s cock, pressing his thumbnail into the tip with a bit of malevolence. A meager whimper. “And you’ll beg for respite. I can’t wait.”

Draco comes. As his third pleasure that evening, it’s watery, a bit thin, and barely covers the top of Alastor’s hand. Alastor wipes it idly on Draco’s stomach, but Draco doesn’t notice. He’s already unconscious.

***

Fifteen minutes later, Draco’s eyelids flutter open and shut. He’s all out of tears and looks completely blissed out.

“Daddy?” Draco’s words are light, airy, as if he can’t get quite enough air into his lungs to actually vocalize.

“Yes, my sweet boy?”

“You know how you spend most of your free time dreaming up new ways to hurt me?”

“Of course.”

“I spend most of my free time dreaming up what you’ll dream up next.”


	2. December 1998

Alastor Moody is fifty-one years old when he accepts a scrawny, traumatized, eighteen-year-old Death Eater into his home through Harry Potter’s new pet project, the Young Parolees Initiative..

It’s the day after Boxing Day, and the boy is sullen and silent, and his movements are stiff. He has just been in Azkaban for six months, after all, sleeping on a concrete slab amongst stones that have absorbed several centuries of abject suffering. He’s skinny, too. Alastor had seen pictures of the boy, of course, in the Daily Prophet. Death Eater Evades Justice? Malfoy the Younger to Parole for a Year in the Home of Ex-Auror Through New Ministry Program—the headline. A photo from Draco’s Fifth Year, scornful and smug, standing proudly while Lucius Malfoy wraps a parental arm around Draco’s strong, healthy shoulders. Alongside it, a scowling photo of “Professor Moody” taken at some point during the Triwizard Tournament.

(Alastor hates everything about the article, but mostly that it announced his name. He’s received too many owls now from ‘concerned’ ‘friends’ inquiring as to whether he lost all his marbles at the Battle of Hogwarts and is that the reason you’re doing this? Seriously, Alastor, we’re worried—we thought you hated hosting company as much as you hated Death Eaters?)

This Draco is nothing like the picture in the Daily Prophet. He’s quiet. Small. He doesn’t even have a wand, and won’t be able to get a new one until his parole is over.

“Now, I ain’t got much,” Alastor warns as he leads the boy up the twisting cobblestone footpath to his cottage. “And you’ll be expected to earn yer keep here one way or another. I’m not some millionaire what can be takin’ in Death Eater parolees for nothin’. You’ll get a job, hear?”

Draco says nothing.

Alastor touches his palm to the front door, which glows briefly before swinging open. “I’ll key you into the wards soon,” he promises.

Draco still says nothing.

Inside, Draco looks about the cottage with neutral disinterest. A main room—a small kitchen in the entryway with a sturdy, round wooden table and three spindly stools (this kitchen set has been around since Alastor was a boy). A huge fireplace on the far wall framed by two plush armchairs—floo powder in a glass jar on a skinny mantlepiece—just a coffee table with a kerosene lamp and a plain forest-green throw rug to fill up the empty space. A wall of books curves around the corner and extends down a narrow hallway towards Alastor’s bedroom, a cramped office, and the lavatory they would have to share. On the back wall, between the stove and the fireplace, there's a nondescript door to the garden. 

“You’ll sleep in the office,” Alastor informs him. “I’ll transfigure you a cot for now. Once you’ve earned some money we’ll get yeh a real bed.”

Draco has yet to respond, and Alastor’s irritation is beginning to mount. He hadn’t expected heaps of praise, but he had at least wanted a bit of gratitude for being willing to supervise Draco’s parole. There hadn’t exactly been a line of other Aurors chomping at the bit for this job. “You have anything you want ter say to me?”

“What exactly do you want me to say?”

Alastor snags Draco by the chin and jerks his head up. “Don’t be takin' tones with me now, boy,” he growls. “The only reason you’re here and not rotting in that cell is because _I_ agreed to house yeh. So you’ll be grateful, you’ll follow my rules, and you’ll obey my orders. Or yeh can be damned sure I’ll send yeh back!” Alastor roughly releases Draco’s chin, satisfied that he’s conveyed the important information.

Whatever defiance had emboldened Draco to ‘take tones’ with Alastor a moment prior vanished entirely. “Y-yes sir,” Draco mumbles. His eyes are dead and emotionless, reminding Alastor uncomfortably of the look in Lucius Malfoy’s eyes when he was sentenced to life-without-parole in Azkaban. But Draco’s hands betray his underlying anxiety—he grips the front of his tattered, Lost-and-Found robes convulsively, opening, closing, opening his fists.

Alastor tries not to be swayed by Draco’s evident nerves. In a gentler tone, he says, “Yeh’re a criminal. But yeh’re a young one, mind, and that’s what this program is for. I don’t trust yeh far as I can throw yeh, but if yeh’re obedient and treat me and my home with respect, we’ll get along.”

“Yes sir,” Draco repeats. His voice is barely above a whisper. “Thank you for your hospitality,” he adds, and he doesn’t sound grateful; but he doesn’t sound ungrateful either. He just doesn’t sound like anything. Alastor thinks again how small he looks. How little he has to his name. How utterly alone in the world he is.

***

On Morning One, Alastor blows up at Draco for leaving his plate on the table after breakfast. Alastor actually flings open the office door, his temper triggered because, for a few minutes after Draco just walked away after breakfast, he’d actually expected Draco to come back and clean up his mess. He finds Draco lounging on his cot, one ankle on one bent knee, staring at the ceiling.

“I don’ know what kinda heathens yeh were raised by”—okay, that’s actually not true—“but in my house, yeh show some respect for the man who cooks yer meals by cleanin' up after yerself.”

Draco startles at the intrusion and his face goes vivid carmine. “I didn’t—I didn’t even think—don’t you have a—”

“What? A house elf? Regular wizards have to cook and clean for ‘emselves,” Alastor snaps in frustration.

Draco follows meekly back out to the main room and comes to a standstill by his stool. “Well, go on, boy,” Alastor orders.

“Um.” Draco picks up the plate, then stands around like an idiot. It occurs to Alastor to ask: “Do yeh even know how to wash a dish?”

Draco shakes his head dumbly.

“Yeh’re… yeh’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Another head shake.

Alastor runs both his hands through his grungy hair, muttering curses under his breath, and gestures for Draco to take the plate to the sink. He’s about to get out his wand to teach Draco the spell when he realizes that Draco has no wand and is not allowed to do magic anyways. So Alastor throws open the cupboard beneath the sink and roots around for a minute before landing on the sponge and soap he’d purchased over a decade ago when his Squib cousin visited. “You turn on the water. The water gets hot. Yeh scrub the dish with this soap and this sponge.” When Draco makes to take the items, Alastor blurts out, “Ain’t no different from washin’ yer own lily-white arse in the shower.”

Draco’s blood makes a desperate bid for escape through the skin of his cheek and neck. But he takes the cleaning supplies and scrubs the filament of egg and potato from the plate into the drain, all under Alastor’s watchful, judgmental gaze. “Is this good?” he asks, seemingly without volition.

“Good ‘nough for a brat with a silver spoon in his mouth, I s’pose.”

On Afternoon Two, Draco drops his lunch plate into the kitchen sink, where it cracks into seven neat segments. Alastor doesn’t really care about the plate, but it still sparks his ire that Draco makes no move to clean it up, and that he doesn’t even apologize.

“Well, go on then, fix it,” Alastor commands from the kitchen table.

“I don’t have a wand,” Draco reminds him tonelessly. “Sir,” he adds belatedly

“Curb your insolence, boy.”

Alastor refuses to feel guilty for his tone, even when Draco takes a short step back and hits the counter. Alastor stands and fumbles his wand from his hip-holster to repair the dish, but the expression on Draco’s face when he raises it stops him short. Draco doesn’t flinch, but his fingers spastically tighten and loosen their grip on the edge of the countertop behind him and his eyes (large, ashy, frantic) fixate on the wand. Alastor is a trained Auror, and he was one of the best—he knows both what fear and someone’s attempt to conceal it look like. He repairs the plate and leaves the room, trying to turn off the strange little voice in his head saying he’s the bad guy for putting that expression on Draco's face.

On Morning Three, Alastor loses his temper because Draco is sitting so silently in one of the armchairs when Alastor gets up that Alastor doesn’t notice him, and so Alastor begins humming a jaunty tune while he whisks eggs for omelettes, and when Alastor finally realizes he's there Draco is hiding what might be a silent giggle behind his hand. “Gallopin’ gargoyles!” Alastor exclaims. He drops the bowl and the eggs ooze out onto the floor in a yellowish puddle. “What the devil are’ya doin’ up so early? Yeh made me drop this!”

Alastor immediately regrets the outburst, because Draco quickly rearranges his expression to be void of all emotion. Draco's face might have looked good with a grin, but now Alastor won't know. “I apologize.” Draco stands up, taking a formal posture with his hands hanging stiffly by his sides. “I will wait in the office until I am called.”

“Ah, laddie, I didn’ mean—

But Draco has already left.

Breakfast is awkward. Draco has been unnaturally quiet since arriving, and they’ve gone entire meals without talking before, but today is somehow worse. Draco fixates his gaze on a knot in the wood of the kitchen table and ineffectually pushes the new eggs around with his fork. Alastor is embarrassed of his reaction earlier, and thinks he ought to apologize, but doesn’t really know how to begin, so neither of them end up saying anything. As soon as they’re finished, Draco scurries back to the office without a word.

Lunch passes in much the same way as breakfast. Draco doesn't leave the office without prompting; the two of them don't speak; each of them push the food around in figure eights on their plates. And Draco goes right back to the office again when the meal thankfully ends.

After cleaning up the dishes and sucking up his pride, Alastor knocks on Draco’s door for the third time that day. “Boy, yeh need some fresh air,” Alastor barks. “Ain’t healthy for a youngin’ like you ter be cooped up all day.”

Draco has never shown any interest in going to the backyard. The garden is sprawling and dense, enclosed with a mossy, mildewed fence that may have been once been white. There’s a rotting wooden shed in the far corner. The yard abounds in thick, leafy tangles of plants—most not blooming this time of year, but impressive and dear to Alastor all the same.

Draco follows Alastor to the shed demurely and hovers in the doorframe. Alastor lights the dank inside of the shed with a _Lumos_ , but he still has to upend a few boxes of tools and knickknacks to find the prize: his old gardening gloves, tattered and faded to some brownish color. As a boy he’d labored in his mother’s garden with these gloves; they no longer fit over his hands. “Yeh ever degnomed a garden?”

Draco shakes his head mutely. Alastor chuckles and hands Draco the gloves. “Put ‘em on.”

The gnomes like to burrow in a patch of dirt by the shed. Even now, in the dead of winter, the soil is warmed by sunlight from morning to night. (Alastor can never keep anything growing in this patch because of these damnable pests.) Alastor drops to his knees and thrusts his gloved hand into the ground, groping around. He finds one and yanks it from its nest, holding it up for Draco’s observation. It squeaks a bit— _gerroff me!_

“This here is a gnome. They’re pesky little blighters. Here’s how yeh deal with ‘em.” Alastor wraps his hand around the gnome’s feet and twirls it above his head, using the full force and strength of a retired, disabled Auror to whip the gnome into a vertigo. Then he tosses the gnome over the fence into the wilderness beyond.

Alastor turns back to Draco, expecting boyish enthusiasm. But Draco looks horrified. “What’s wrong, boy?

“It looks painful,” Draco admits.

A warm, tender feeling surges through Alastor’s heart. Draco actually has compassion for these obnoxious creatures. “Nah, it don’ hurt ‘em none. They just get dizzy. They’re meant to be swung like that—it’s the age-old way of things between wizards and gnomes.”

Draco doesn’t look much convinced, but he drops uneasily to his knees and tries to imitate Alastor’s excavation technique. Alastor scrutinizes, and he sees the moment that Draco’s hand has landed on a gnome—a tiny bit of excitement on his Draco’s face. “I found one, Alastor!” Draco pulls it out of the ground more gently than Alastor and holds it face-up in the cradle of his two hands. “It’s so small.” Draco strokes it a bit. “And cute.”

The 'cute' gnome promptly sinks its teeth into Draco’s thumb. Draco yelps and drops it, and the triumphant gnome burrows back into the dirt with a heckling cackle.

“That’s gnomes for yeh. Ain’t got no loyalty. The glove’ll protect yeh from any weird diseases, though.”

Draco nurses his bitten thumb sends Alastor a baleful look. “I don’t think I’m cut out for this.”

Part of Alastor thinks Draco looks adorable when he’s in pain, but the more rational part of Alastor that wants Draco to come back out to the garden with him sometime pulls his wand from his holster and casts a quick spell to numb the bite. Alastor sees the instinctive fear on Draco's face morph to shock, then soften into some more delicate emotion, and Alastor suddenly worries about what he's supposed to do if Draco says thank you, so Alastor doesn't give him a chance. “Wee lads ‘ave been degnomin' gardens for their mums all across the Wizarding World since before you, or me, my father, or his father even, was born. So yeh'll get the hang of it. Just spin ‘em fast—and don’t pet them, for Merlin’s sake—and yeh won’ come to no more harm.”

Alastor demonstrates again, deftly extracting the gnome that had just bitten Draco from the ground and spinning it in a vicious circle over his head. Alastor pitches it over the fence, perhaps a bit more violently than necessary as a minor act of vengeance. “And there yeh have it. You try again.”

Draco manages to get it right with the next gnome—he doesn’t give it the opportunity to bite him, and he swings it around his head in a passable imitation of Alastor, and he chucks the bugger over the fence. He turns towards Alastor, face flushed and gleaming, and exclaims, “I did it!”

“Very good,” Alastor praises. The blush on Draco's face deepens. “Now do that again a couple hundred more times.”

The sun has already gone down when Alastor deems the degnoming complete. Alastor is sore, and Draco, unused to the labor, groans a bit when he tries to stretch out his limbs. “Yeh’ve got first shower, lad. Go ahead and get yerself cleaned up." Alastor casts a few _Tergeos_ to hold himself over while Draco washes up and changes into lounging clothes, then collapses on his bed to wait. He vaguely plans to get up and make dinner in just...a...minute...

A soft knock on his door about an hour later rouses him from his nap, and when Alastor barks out that Draco can come in, the opening door reveals a clean, tiny blonde boy standing on the threshold holding a metallic tea tray (a plastic one painted in silver). It's the sorriest tea service Alastor has ever seen: one single mug, made with a teabag instead of loose leaf, and there's no sugar, no biscuits. Draco must have sloshed the tea on the way from the kitchen, because there's a little puddle of brown liquid on the tray next to the cup.

“I—I brought you some tea,” Draco states unnecessarily. “Thought you might want some after working."

“Uh… lad, you really think I’d drink something you made me?” Alastor can’t quite keep the hint of disgust out of his voice.

Either Draco is an impeccable actor or he’d honestly not considered that Alastor might respond this way, but he's crestfallen. “I just… I wanted to…” But whatever it is Draco wanted, he never says. He quickly retreats, and Alastor is left with a strange, unmoored feeling, like a rough hand constricting around his heart and lungs. Guilt, Alastor realizes, is the name for this feeling, isn’t it?

Alastor stretches his aching muscles for a moment—and he’s aware he's not exactly young enough to be napping in the middle of the evening anymore—but he can’t put off getting up any longer. He has to say something to the kid. When he finally manages to leave the bedroom, he sees that Draco has washed the teacup and put the tray back in its normal spot on the counter. Draco sits by the fireplace, staring into the unlit grate with a glazed, unfocused look. His thumb is red and inflamed now that the numbing spell has worn off. He hasn’t asked for a healing balm; more regret dances around in Alastor’s chest.

“Laddie.” Draco looks up with a start; he must not have not heard Alastor come in. Draco eyes him warily as Alastor sits down. Does he actually think Alastor is going to punish him?

After a few moments of silence, as Alastor psyches himself up to apologize, he finally manages to grunt out, “I didn’t mean nothin’ personal." Draco shrugs, and Alastor feels compelled to give further explanation. “Truly. I don’t eat or drink a thing I don’t make meself. Constant Vigilance.”

“I understand, sir.” Draco’s voice is emotionless. “I won’t do it again.”

“Was that your first time making tea?” Alastor can’t help but wonder. Draco nods almost imperceptibly, and something about that admission is charming. “I… appreciate what y’were tryin’ to do, even though I couldn’ accept it.”

Alastor’s words cause the tiniest hint of red to bloom across Draco’s face, which Alastor unexpectedly likes (and why, Alastor wonders, should he like that Draco responds so well to his praise?). But more important matters are at hand, like Draco's gnome bite. Alastor wordlessly summons a healing salve and, without asking, grabs Draco’s hand between his two and begins to smear it over his injury. Draco gapes in astonishment, though Alastor pretends not to notice.

When Alastor finishes, he pats the top Draco's hand with undisguised tenderness before realizing what he's doing and pulls away. “Look, lad. I’m not a nice man. I’ve got a temper. But you don’ need to worry none. I’m all bark, so just ignore me when I’m bein’ an arsehole. I don’t mean none’a it.” The words are inadequate, but it’s Alastor’s only idea for a peace offering. Alastor forces himself to add (honestly), that, “I’ll try’n be a bit nicer, from now on.”

Luckily it seems to work—Draco’s small, pale lips curl up slightly in the corner. Relief sweeps through Alastor's entire body that he hadn't lost his chance to see that smile after all. And it’s a pretty one.


	3. February 2000

Alastor can, and has, dreamt up a lot of pain for Draco during their time together in the cottage. He likes to launch Stinging hexes at Draco’s bare anus—the way that Draco contorts, instinctually arching his back in an ineffectual escape attempt. It’s great target practice! He also likes to shove his wand into Draco and sting him inside, or cast any number of strange incantations in Draco’s bum that make him squeal in discomfort. (A jet of icy water; a small blue flame; an _Engorgio_ charm on an everyday object). Of course, he likes caning Draco too, whipping him, spanking him. Pretty much any form of strike will do. A punch to Draco’s belly is thrilling, though he might like slapping Draco in the face the best—he’s fond of (obsessed with, really) the blooming red and purple marks on Draco’s cheeks that have to be Glamour-ed in public.

(Draco’s into the marks too, and he craves the pain. Begs for it. Implores Alastor not to use a healing balm and take away the pretty agony, though Alastor usually doesn’t grant that request.)

The bruises are only hot when Alastor makes them, though.

Alastor sometimes dreams of darker things for his boy—things that Alastor would never make Draco do, but are intoxicating to imagine all the same. In his fantasies, Draco is bent naked over a fallen tree in some forest, and Alastor finds some dirty branch from the ground and douses it in some pheromone potion that he buys at some apothecary—for my farm, Alastor mutters to the shopkeeper, though the shopkeeper looks suspicious (Alastor Moody isn’t known for farming, after all). Alastor breaks the branch over Draco’s back and thighs, peppering him with grimy little scrapes. Pheromones from the branch seep into the cuts. Alastor then uses one broken half of the branch to introduce the pheromones directly into Draco’s hole. One Disillusionment charm later, and Alastor is able to watch, from a safe distance, as various woodland creatures—a unicorn, an acromantula, a werewolf, a cerberus—use Draco one after the other in a relentless train. The pheromone, whatever it is (does something as such even exist, Alastor wonders?), is powerful, and Draco, tiny, human boy that he is, is weak. They fuck him; they bite him, laving their thick animal tongues in his abrasions, trying to suck the pheromone out of his skin. Draco cries but they’re beasts so they don’t understand him, and they don’t stop. Alastor doesn’t stop them either.

Alongside that fantasy naturally arises the image of the Hippogriff, Buckbeak. Draco has revealed that he’d insulted Buckbeak as a Third Year and suffered minor consequences. Alastor’s dick becomes stiff as a steel rail imagining the present, nineteen-year-old Draco being mauled by Buckbeak today. The Hippogriff is out for revenge, and it doesn’t even have to mount Draco to get Alastor off—it’s enough sometimes to imagine it knocking Draco to the ground and stomping on him, leaving hoof-shaped bruises and claw marks on his chest and back and arse. But sometimes in his fantasies Buckbeak rapes Draco too, and that’s even hotter to Alastor. The Hippogriff’s snarling, offended face is the best part: Draco, snot-nosed and sniveling, tries to apologize for his rudeness from six years ago, but Buckbeak is not in a forgiving sort of mood—piledrives him more ruthlessly with each of Draco’s sorries. The relentless dicking bulges out his abdomen. Buckbeak’s front claw presses Draco’s face into dirt which has turned to mud from Draco’s phlegm and tears.

Alastor likes, most of all, to save these dark fantasies for the days Draco is not up for marks and pain. He fucks Draco gently on those days, tender kisses, slow steady thrusts that build up Draco’s pleasure bit by bit, caresses not spanks or stripes or slaps. He waits until Draco is warmed up and begging to come before he introduces the imagery into the fuck: “What would it feel like, you reckon, to get fucked by a Hippogriff?” asked with innocent curiosity, as if he’s wondering what Draco might like for dinner or whether Draco takes one sugar or two in his tea.

“I—ah!—I d-don’t know,” Draco answers. Draco's face is smushed into the mattress and he's throbbing and hard and on his knees and Alastor’s question makes his hole contract and tremble around Alastor’s cock. “Ah, ah,” he gasps each time Alastor nudges his prostate.

“You’d like it, I think,” Alastor continues, taking perverse pleasure in keeping his tone politely conversational. “Their cocks are twice the size of a human’s, and twice as long. And they’re barbed. That means they’ve got little spikes—from the base to the head. Did you know that?”

(Alastor is making all this up. He’s never seen a Hippogriff’s penis.)

Draco’s hands are splayed above his head, fisting and unfurling in the sheets. “I didn’t know!” he chokes out, knowing Alastor wants some answer.

“A Hippogriff’s cock would be special, I reckon. It would scrape you up and make you bleed. And it’s so big it would have to stretch yer stomach out to make room—like my fist, but even bigger. I don’t think a Hippogriff would stop no matter how much you cried. I think it might go harder, just to revenge yeh for being so rude to it. Merlin, I’m hot just thinking about it.”

So is Draco, apparently, whose cock erupts with a sudden and surprising orgasm. Neither he nor Alastor had even been touching it. “Oh god,” he pants as Alastor, uncaring that Draco reached his pleasure, steadily stays stirring up his insides. But since Alastor knows Draco came, he can aim his cock more purposefully at Draco’s prostate to elicit some painful, sensitive gasps.

Alastor becomes caught up in his fantasy. “You were so naughty, you said something unforgivably impolite to Buckbeak.” Thrust, his fingers tangling in Draco’s hair and wanting to pull, an irresistible urge to bite and gouge and slap. Resisting. Draco doesn’t want that today. “I’d ask Potter if I could borrow the beast for the day. I’d take the three of us out to the woods, and I’d tell ye, ‘You’ll take this obscene Hippogriff dick or I won’t call you a good boy ever again.’ So you kneel, you put yer own face into the dirt, you lift yer own arse to present. Such an obedient little slave.

“Buckbeak mounts you immediately, but that dick don’t fit, and his cock just pushes you back and forth, so he has to dig his talons into your back to hold you still—that’s not very safe for you, is it? And you beg for mercy when he’s finally able to impale you with that vile dick. You don’t beg him, of course; you beg me. Your stomach bulges out on each thrust. And I laugh, because even if I could do anything about a Hippogriff’s rage, I wouldn’t want to. I would much rather watch him break you in half.”

Draco is sobbing into the mattress, over-sensitized and unable to protect himself from the onslaught of Alastor’s depraved imagination. “D-daddy!” he wails. “Y-you wouldn’t—you’d never make me—” But maybe Draco isn’t quite sure of that, because when Alastor reaches around Draco’s valiant little prick is already trying to get hard again. Alastor erupts. “Oh fuck,” he breathes into Draco’s shoulder and collapses half on top of his back.

They’re silent for a few minutes, Alastor’s cock softening but staying put in Draco’s anus. Finally, Draco speaks. “I want it be known that I will actually leave you if you make me fuck Buckbeak,” he grouses, attempting to sound very put-upon for a boy who just orgasmed at the thought.

“Would you?” Alastor jokes. “Yeh’d give up being called my good boy forever?

There’s silence, and Alastor wonders if he’s misreading the situation—did he frighten Draco with the fantasy or take it too far? But then Draco twists himself around (dislodging Alastor’s dick, unfortunately) and launches into a full-body snuggle. “You wouldn’t actually do that to me,” Draco says with finality in his tone. “You’d never coerce me into doing something I wasn’t comfortable with by threatening to leave me if I didn’t do it. That type of coercion might be fun to think about together when we’re in bed, but it’s just one of our consensual fantasies.”

The vocabulary sounds a bit funny coming out of Draco’s mouth since he’s lifted it all from therapy and is still working out how to apply all that stuff to his real life. But the total trust in Draco’s voice is evident—and terrifying. The weight of his responsibility for his boy’s security bears down on him, multiplied a hundredfold by Draco’s certainty that Alastor won’t fuck it all up. Alastor still isn’t sure he’s earned such confidence.

***

Alastor would kill anyone else who lays a hand on Draco, but it doesn’t stop him from taking pleasure in hitting Draco himself—and through their time together, Alastor has gotten to hit Draco in all sorts of exciting ways. His butt with a cane; his face with a palm; his neck and shoulders with Alastor’s teeth; his stomach with a fist. It’s gotten to the point that Alastor is purposefully careless, improvidently rough with Draco’s body. He deliberately neglects to modulate his force. Draco is part lover, part fuck doll, part whipping boy.

It’s a bit of a game for them both, though they’re playing with different goals. Alastor’s objectives: How many square inches of Draco’s skin can he dapple black and blue? How loud will Draco cry? Will a healing balm be enough, or does Draco need to go to St. Mungo’s this time? Draco’s objectives: how long can he withstand Alastor’s rage before screaming for mercy? How good of a Glamour charm can he cast with his new wand before going back to work the next day? Can he persuade Alastor not to apply the healing balm this time or is Alastor going to be all parental about it again?

(Alastor didn’t used to be able to trust that Draco would tell him if he goes too far; but nowadays he can, so nowadays Alastor goes too far.)

Draco told Alastor during therapy that he feels safe when he’s being pummeled. Alastor is still a bit frightened of that; scared of the fact that Draco feels secure with him because Alastor, for all has malice, draws the line at things that could really hurt him: no face-punching (“Yeh have a history of head injuries, laddie”), and no kicking, and nothing more severe to his neck than a mild squeeze. Alastor’s brutality is just measured enough to be comforting.

Despite Draco’s confidence in Alastor’s ability to moderate, Alastor isn’t so sure. Draco begged Alastor to punch his face once early on in their relationship, and when Alastor said no, Draco goaded him into it. Alastor got pissed, and Draco apologized, and Alastor apologized too, and Alastor applied a balm and healed Draco’s broken nose and the entire scene ended with a tame snuggle in bed. But Alastor has never admitted to Draco that it actually felt good to ram his knuckles into Draco’s nose—too good. He wants to do it again. He won’t. He thinks he won’t. Not for the first time, he wonders if Draco’s erred by placing his trust in a sadist like him. Sometimes his raging affection for Draco manifests in dangerous ways—in ways that Draco doesn’t mind enough.

Alastor’s fists are obscene next to Draco’s body, and Alastor likes the contrast between their two bodies. Each of Alastor’s hands are wrinkly and riddled with varicose veins and liver spots. The skin around his knuckles is roughened and stiff. His nails are yellowed and cracking, and the right thumbnail is permanently black from a stray curse back during his time as an Auror. The fists themselves, attached to bulging, leathery arms, are proportional to Alastor’s height and girth—each rough sphere nearly half the size of Draco’s head. Alastor feels like the beasts in their fantasies when clobbers Draco with these hands: an ugly, slavering, feral monster.

He uses these fists to batter Draco’s willing, craving body. It’s perversely pleasing to sink one into the concave divot of Draco’s belly: his fist the pestle and Draco’s stomach the mortar. Alastor pulverizes the tender skin. Sometimes he sinks and presses, boring through Draco’s guts like a tunneling drill; sometimes he draws the fist back and clobbers in individual jabs, eliciting painful grunts and gasps with each repetition. Either way, Draco’s stomach goes from red to blue to black, which are Alastor’s favorite colors for Draco’s skin. 

Sometimes Alastor goes lower and bashes his balls. Each wallop sends nausea curdling through Draco’s insides. Draco’s incoherent babbles and throaty gurgles just make Alastor want to hit his testicles harder, so he does. He can use stinging hexes here too for the ultra effect: he can sensitize Draco’s bollocks with the spells before landing stolid blows with his knuckles that would fell a giant and that send Draco to the brink of unconsciousness.

And not often, but on the days when Draco needs a real reminder of who owns him, Alastor shoves his fist in Draco’s hole. He punches Draco’s insides like his outsides: furiously, cruelly, without regard for Draco’s pleas for mercy or his hiccupping sobs. Reshaping him from the outside in. Transubstantiating what’s Draco’s into what’s Alastor’s.

Draco tries to describe to Alastor and Dr. Lara how it feels to be punched—it’s like being completely overthrown, indentured to Alastor’s glowering knuckles, humbled and conquered and enslaved. Draco likes those feelings when they’re from Alastor because Alastor makes him feel safe. He pursues Alastor’s rage. It’s soothing because Alastor’s vicious, unconstrained passion has nothing to hide—no fake smiles or politeness to obscure what Alastor really feels. When Alastor is at his most vehement and ruthless is when Draco feels the most secure.

But perhaps ‘safe’ and ‘secure’ are too quaint of descriptors; Draco feels like an object when Alastor hits him, like a treasured punching bag, like Alastor’s fists are saying, ‘I hit you because you’re mine.’ And Draco wants nothing more than to be someone’s.

***

But Alastor can’t, of course, do every single thing he wants to Draco. There are days when the response to Alastor’s question, ‘can I be mean today?’ is a quivering lip, a negative shake of the head, Please don’t be mad. I’m not mad, sweetheart. I’ve got yeh. I’m not goin’ anywhere.

Some examples of things Alastor can’t do even on the days he’s ‘mean’: if he calls Draco a whore, (which he only did once, and it was an accident because he knew this would happen), Draco’s eyes go to that detached place where he doesn’t cry or scream or even say anything at all. (And when Draco goes into disassociation survival mode, Alastor has to keep better watch—has to rein in the sadistic beast that just wants to destroy his prey because Draco can’t be trusted to safeword in that state.)

He also can’t fantasize about Draco fucking other men. Draco likes the monster fantasies—the notion of slavering, inhuman creatures raping and defeating him makes Draco buck and plead (in spite of, or more likely because of, the fact that Alastor has made clear that, no matter how exciting the obscene fantasies are, Alastor would never permit Draco to be fucked by an animal.) But he safeworded when Alastor whispered that it would be hot to see Draco spitroasted by his two coworkers at the café. It was an error in judgment and Alastor should have known it the moment the words came out of his mouth. Plentiful tears that night, but not the good kind. Please don’t, Daddy, please don’t, please don’t make me, please don’t. I won’t, dear heart, of course I won’t. Please don’t! You’re safe, my dear boy. I’ve got yeh. Daddy, I’m begging you, please don’t make me.

A wooden pillory is completely off limits. Before he and Draco were fucking, Alastor had had several delectable fantasies of his small, skinny boy being forced into a full-body bend by the implacable wooden device, his round and fuckable arse completely accessible for Alastor’s use and his neck and shoulders aching from strain. But now even the thought of a pillory makes Alastor want to vomit, because he found out that a couple weeks after Draco’s seventeenth birthday, Lord Voldemort ordered Draco’s incarceration in one such pillory and commanded every one of his Death Eaters to brutally rape him, one after the other, as punishment for failing to kill Dumbledore.


	4. January-February 1999

Draco needs a job.

Draco is idle by nature, which doesn’t really surprise Alastor given who raised him. He goes to bed early, gets up late, and can easily spend an entire day inside reading books and the newspaper in one of the armchairs without even pausing for meals. Since Alastor does all the cooking (Constant Vigilance!), he makes Draco clean, but the cottage is small so Draco still has many empty hours to fill (even considering how inefficient he is at the chores.) Sometimes Alastor can bully Draco into a game of cards after dinner or an afternoon in the garden or even a walk by the riverfront in the village—these activities exhaust Alastor and Draco both. Worse than the constant reading are the days when Draco does nothing—he just stares blankly into the fireplace and takes no notice of Alastor moving about. It’s like he’s in some other place, and frankly, it creeps Alastor out.

So by the end of Draco’s second week there, Alastor decides to impose some discipline. “Laddie, you can’t just sit around all day readin’ and mopin’. You need to get a job and get out of the house.”

It’s morning, and Draco is perched on one of the spindly kitchen stools, his elbows resting on the table in a way that doesn’t look very comfortable, the Daily Prophet in one hand and a piece of fruit in the other. “Why? You don’t work, and you never get out of the house either,” Draco points out.

Alastor grits his teeth. He’s been trying not to snap whenever Draco is sassy, because his cheek is far preferable to Draco’s cheerless, emotionless moods. He takes a deep breath before delivering what he thinks is a very measured response under the circumstances: “I’m fifty-one years old and retired on a disability pension. You are a totally broke young lad of eighteen who didn’t even get to take yer NEWTs. What do you think’s going to happen when yer parole is up next year?”

Draco shrugs, his cheeks coloring a bit. “I’ll figure something out.”

“Oh yeah? With what resources? What skills? Yeh haven’t even got a wand.”

“I mean, I’ll get a wand by then—”

“You’ll have to _purchase_ a new wand, laddie. And with what money?”

“I’ll borrow some from you.”

“Not happening.”

Draco’s cheeks are getting redder. “Why not? I thought you wanted to help me.”

“I do. That’s why you need a job. I want to help you become independent and able to take care of yerself.”

“I plan to become a politician, I’ll have you know. I’ll make money from lobbyists. And I’ll likely marry rich, to boot.”

What an entitled brat. “You’re not exactly in society’s good graces right now,” Alastor grinds out, “so yeh probably ought to come up with a more realistic ten-year plan.”

“Well whose fault is that? You said you would take me with you to Ministry functions so I could improve my standing, but you haven’t even _mentioned_ going to one yet.”

Alastor only barely manages to hold back the obvious response that Draco and his sociopath father are the only ones who can be held responsible for Draco’s bad reputation. But he figures Draco already knows that, deep down, so it seems like it might be cruel to say it. “There’s only so many of those events each year,” Alastor grumbles instead. “But I get it—yer a blue blood, and the idea of workin’ with other peasants is discomfiting for you. Demoralizin’.” Alastor spits the words out with no small amount of contempt, which Draco picks up on.

“It’s not that,” Draco protests. He doesn’t sound that convincing. “It’s… well, I can’t get a job in the Wizarding world, now can I? I don’t have a wand! And everyone knows who…” Draco cuts himself off. “I just don’t see what type of work I would be able to do.”

“Plenty a’ jobs in the Muggle world, boy. Easy jobs that ain’t require no skills.” _Where no one would recognize you._

Draco’s distaste at the idea of working in the Muggle world is plain on his face. “What would I do in the Muggle world?”

“Cashier at Tesco’s. Barista. Mopping up an elementary school. Merlin, I don’t know. Pickin’ up rubbish from the side of the motorway.”

“Uh… what’s a motorway?”

***

It takes another week and a half of Alastor kicking Draco out of the house every day at 10am and barking, “Go look for a job,” for Draco to get hired at Higher Grounds, a cozy little café in the nearby village. Draco returns from his interview with undisguised pride. He comes through the door, throws the brown Muggle jacket Alastor had found for him at a thrift shop over the back of the empty stool in the kitchen, and announces, “Alastor, I’m officially a barrister.”

“That’s barista, laddie.”

“Whatever.” Draco’s cheeks are shiny from the mid-winter cold, and his smile is bright. It’s one of Draco’s good days. “I’ll be making four pounds per hour, I’ll have you know.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s thirty-two pounds per day. Which is over six galleons per day, I’ve calculated, based on the conversion rate. Which means I only need to work two days to earn enough to buy a wand.”

“You still have to wait ‘til yer parole is over ‘til yer allowed to get it,” Alastor reminds him. “Plus you still have to pay yer rent. To me. For housin’ yeh and feedin’ yeh and all that such.

“Oh, stop bringing me down with all your responsible, Alastor.” Draco drapes himself over the kitchen table, resting his chin in his hands and looking inordinately pleased with himself. “I am a working man now. A professional. Soon I’ll be making more than your paltry Ministry pension, and you’ll be the one asking me for money.”

Alastor raises his eyebrow. That ‘paltry’ pension was responsible for everything good in Draco’s life right now and paid far more than a bare-minimum wage job at a coffee shop ever would, given Alastor’s years of service and the extra stipend for his leg _and_ eye. “Fer yer sake and mine, I hope that day comes sooner rather than later. Shall we go out to celebrate?”

Draco shoots up straight. “Out? Where?”

“I don’t know. We could go out to eat, I s’pose. Yeh’ve been here a month with only my subpar cooking.”

Draco nods his agreement a bit too enthusiastically. Then he seems to realize how rude this is, and stammers out, “Er, I mean, that is, your cooking is fine, not subpar of course, well, except in comparison to the house elves at the Manor. And the elves at Hogwarts. But in comparison to regular wizards, I’m sure yours is totally adequate.” Draco pauses. “Not that I’ve ever eaten cooking by a regular wizard, other than yours.”

“So, what yer sayin’ is, my cooking is subpar to every other thing you’ve ever eaten.”

“Well no! In Azkaban—”

“Quit while yer ahead, boy.”

“But all that is to say, I’m very grateful that you cook for me.” Draco bites his bottom lip nervously. “And let me live here, even though it’s small and you don’t have much room.”

Alastor can’t help but laugh. “You do have a talent for insultin’ others without even tryin’.” He thinks Draco will laugh too, but Draco’s expression has gone a bit blank and that’s a warning sign. He’s doing that thing he does with his hands, nervous, clutching and releasing the edge of the table in a choppy rhythm. Alastor can’t fight the uncontrollable urge to comfort him, or at the very least, shake some emotion back into him. “I’m just teasin’ yeh,” Alastor hurries to say. “I know yeh’re grateful. And a little worried yeh’re taking up too much space, hm?”

Draco’s nerves don’t seem to disappear, so Alastor adds, “Well yeh don’t need to worry. Really. You worked hard to get this job, I’m proud of yeh, and you deserve a treat.”

Draco ducks his head bashfully—trying and failing to conceal a pleased little smile. “I deserve a treat?”

“Why not? Good boys deserve a reward for doing what they’re s’posed to,” Alastor jokes. He’s not prepared for the raging blush that overtakes Draco’s face, but he’s irrationally triumphant that Draco’s hands have relaxed. Maybe Draco likes being a good boy.

***

Draco wants to go to a fancy French place in Diagon Alley called, “Le Petit Chariot,” but Alastor vetoes that idea quickly after hearing it’s a Malfoy family favorite. “No can do, laddie. Too expensive.”

“I hadn’t even considered the price. The menus there don’t say.”

Such a naïve brat. “I don’t know any reasonably-priced French restaurants,” Alastor confesses, “but I know an Italian place just off the Diagon main drag that might be a decent enough substitute.”

Draco looks adequately pleased, so they walk down the cobblestone pathway to the edge of Alastor’s wards and Side-Along to the Leaky Cauldron. Alastor would have been fine just eating here but Draco seems uncomfortable in the dim, smoky tavern, and this is Draco’s treat after all.

“How far down the alley is it?” Draco asks as they stroll together, side-by-side. It’s a chilly evening and not many others are out and about.

“‘Bout a ten-minute walk. Too cold for yeh?”

“Not at all.” But Draco steps just a bit closer to Alastor and loops his hand through the crook of Alastor’s arm. Alastor reflects that Draco looks simultaneously like his young lover and like a sixteen-year-old daughter being taken to a father-daughter dance. “It is a bit chilly,” Draco finally admits after they walk a few moments with linked arms. It’s as close to an explanation—or an apology—as Alastor is going to get for Draco making unsolicited physical contact. Alastor doesn’t mind, really, so he doesn’t push Draco away.

Draco is correct about the temperature. It isn’t snowing, but the air is crisp and has the smell of a coming storm, and every once in a while a gust of wind chills Alastor to his bones. These cold nights are Alastor’s favorites because no one else wants to go outside.

“I suppose I am a wizard.” Alastor removes his wand from its holster and points it at Draco, who gives Alastor that dreadful, wide-eyed look like Alastor is about to cast the Cruciatus. But then Draco sighs with relief when he realizes it’s just a standard Warming Charm. Alastor performs one on himself as well, and he has to admit, it improves the walk. He assumes Draco will pull away now, but he doesn’t, so they continue arm-in-arm in companionable silence. Alastor can’t remember the last time he’s touched a person for this long.

The restaurant itself is pleasantly dim, lit only by candlelight, and a maître d’ seats Draco and Alastor a few minutes after they arrive. “Never been to place where you didn’t have a reservation, huh?” Alastor teases while they wait to be seated.

Draco is startled into a chuckle. “No, I suppose not. Though, to be honest, my father could go wherever he wanted, reservation or not, and they’d always make room for him.”

They’re led to a small booth in the corner that’s not too close to anyone else. Alastor opens up the menu fondly, thinking back to the times he came here with his Auror buddies after closing some challenging case or another. His eyes are already drifting to his favorite item—Cavatelli with lamb ragú, mint and pecorino—when he notices Draco’s eyes have taken on a frantic gleam.

“What’s wrong?”

Draco points to the open menu in front of him. “I make six galleons a day. A meal here is, Merlin, it’s two and a half galleons for a main course, some are even three and a half. Then a half galleon for a side salad, a half galleon for a drink. A galleon for dessert, if I order any. A bit more for the tip. That means that, at my new job, I’d basically have to work an entire day just to afford a single meal for _myself_ ; two days if I wanted to treat someone.”

Alastor can tell that this subject is distressing to Draco—his voice has risen in pitch and his words are quick, stumbling, as if this is the first time he’s thought about this and can’t control the rapid waterfall of emotions. Alastor doesn’t feel a ton of sympathy for Draco’s rich-boy-turned-poor-boy problems, though, so Alastor just grunts, “That’s the lot of the working poor, lad. You’re one of us now.”

Draco fiddles with the corner of the menu and bites his lip. “If I still had my inheritance, I could have eaten here every night and it wouldn’t have even made a dent. I’d have earned more in interest every day than I spent here.”

Alastor shrugs and tries (poorly) to disguise his irritation at the reminder of the privilege Draco grew up in. “Is that what yeh really want, anyhow? To eat here every night?”

Draco is quiet until a waiter comes by to drop off a basket of bread and take their order. Alastor orders his Cavatelli, and when Draco mumbles out the name of a small appetizer, Alastor adds a second Cavatelli to the order before sending the waiter away.

“I don’t want that,” Draco finally mumbles in a small voice. “I don’t want that!” he repeats louder, more confidently.

Alastor feels like a berk for adding the Cavatelli without asking, but at Draco’s next words, Alastor figures out that Draco isn’t talking about that at all. “Alastor, I’m not my father. I don’t have to eat at a restaurant every night, or live in a manor and have house elves do all the cleaning, or have an inheritance, or order people around. I don’t want that life! That life was miserable, and this one’s not. I would rather have this life, even if it means that I only make six Galleons a day.”

Alastor is a little surprised—he’d figured Draco grew up with everything he could ever want and need, so he almost asks, ‘why was it miserable?’ But he’s not sure he wants to know, and he doesn’t think Draco will answer, and it’ll probably make things awkward, so he just says, “Right you are, sonny. Just like the rest of the rabble, you’ll learn to be happy even when you have to eat homemade cheese toasties most of the time.”

Alastor snags a piece of bread and slathers it with butter. It’s quite good, but he can’t really taste it because he’s distracted by the pleasant glow on Draco’s grinning face.

***

The job makes a big difference to Draco’s moods. Sure, sometimes he comes home frustrated about the Muggles and their “stupid, complicated drink orders,” or exhausted because a machine broke or a coworker called in sick or a Muggle threw a tanty, but he always comes home feeling _something_ and his feelings are always too big to contain, and that, to Alastor, is a huge step up from staring blankly at the wall.

Which is why Alastor thinks it’s suspicious when one evening Draco withdraws straight to the office when he gets home instead of finding Alastor and rambling on about the sundry annoyances of his new blue-collar, entirely-too-filled-with-Muggles life. Alastor is stooped over one of his vegetable beds in the garden when he hears the front door open, but by the time he walks inside to say hello, Draco has already disappeared to his room.

Alastor rinses the dirt off his hands in the sink and knocks on Draco’s door. “Welcome home, lad,” he says through the wood.

Draco’s muffled voice responds from behind the door, “Hi Alastor. I’m kind of tired. Long day. Gonna hit the hay early.”

Alastor glances down at his watch. It’s barely 5:30. “Um…yeh wanna eat first?”

“No, no. I don’t. I’m not hungry, really.”

It’s not entirely impossible that Draco really isn’t hungry—he’s a skinny twig for a reason. So Alastor decides to let it lie for the moment. He spends the next half an hour throwing together a simple stew and then slops a reasonable portion into a bowl for Draco. Alastor knocks on the door again and says, “Draco, I’m bringin’ in some dinner for yeh.”

“Alastor, it’s fine! Don’t come in!”

Draco’s evasive behavior ratchets up Alastor’s concerns and suspicions. He goes to turn the handle, but Draco has locked it, and that ignites his temper. “What the hell is goin’ on in there, boy?”

“Nothing! Nothing! I just want to be alone!”

That does nothing to alleviate Alastor’s worry and paranoia, and before Alastor can consider whether he’s about to ruin his and Draco’s shaky peace, he unlocks the door with his wand and slams it open. “Merlin, boy, what are you hidin’ in—”

The answer to that question is obvious. Draco is standing in the middle of the room, and the entire left side of his face is decorated with a splotchy, purpling bruise.

“Alastor! I told you not to come in, this is an invasion of my privacy, you, you—you brute!”

But Alastor isn’t listening. He sets the bowl of stew on the nightstand and then grasps Draco’s chin in his hand to inspect the injury. “Who did this,” he questions coldly.

“N-no one, I just walked into a—”

“Don’t you dare lie to me!” Alastor’s irritation flares. “Tell me how this happened.”

Draco trembles, and Alastor realizes he’s squeezing Draco’s chin a bit too hard. He relaxes his grip and lets his hand drift up to the bruise—stroking it, soothing it. “I’m sorry for losin’ my temper, laddie. But yeh need to tell me who did this.”

“It was stupid. It was his fault, not mine!”

Somehow, Alastor isn’t certain he believes that. “Start at the beginning, lad.”

Draco crosses his arms a bit petulantly, but he obediently starts telling the story. “Well so, today was my first payday. But Muggles get paid in these little paper rectangles, which makes no sense. And Jenny—she’s a barista too—she took me to this tiny bank where you can like, turn the rectangle into money. And so I got all the money, and it was like, sixty pounds. Sixty-three, actually, so I had a couple extra. So, since it was kind of a nice afternoon, I figured I’d walk in the downtown area a bit…”

“And buy a candy from Lola, I presume.”

Draco blushes, which confirms for Alastor that going to Lola’s little food cart by the riverfront had definitely been Draco’s plan. “No, I was just walking, in no particular direction and with no goals in mind whatsoever, and I see this person. And he was definitely homeless, and I thought, well, I’ve just gotten paid, and I’ve always seen the value in making charitable contributions, so it made sense, right? To ask him if he wanted a little cash?”

“Are… are you asking me?”

“Yes! Tell me you agree that it was completely justified to ask if he wanted a donation.”

“Did yeh ask him, or did yeh tell him, laddie?”

“Um. I mean. I might have said something like,” and Draco’s voice dropped to a mumble, “‘Since you’re homeless and clearly down on your luck you probably need these three pounds more than I do.’”

“Let me guess. He wasn’t homeless.”

Draco’s lips curl up into a sneer—Alastor thinks he can understand, a bit, why Draco had had so much trouble making friends in school. “He said he was _traveling_. Traveling! In dirty rags and shoes with ugly holes in them. You could see his disgusting toenails, Alastor! I don’t see how he could be surprised that I thought he was homeless. He should have been grateful that I wanted to be generous.”

A piece of the story must still be missing. Alastor lets his fingers drift up and down Draco’s cheek. “Laddie, were you holding all yer pounds in yer bare hands?”

Draco furrows his eyebrow, thinking. “I guess so. I had just gotten them after all.”

“So, yeh walked up to a strange, disheveled man, told him he looked homeless, and flaunted all of your money in his face while only actually offering a couple pounds. Can yeh see how that might be seen as inconsiderate?”

Draco’s lip quivered; some of his petty righteousness is fading away. “Are you saying it’s my fault?”

Agh. Alastor had been implying just that, but Draco’s question makes him realize it’s an awful thing to say. “No. Of course it’s not yer fault,” Alastor reassures hastily. “He lost his temper and he struck yeh, and that’s never okay. All I was sayin’ was that yeh could be more careful and not put yerself in unsafe situations in the first place. It can be dangerous to talk to street people—Constant Vigilance, my dear boy.” The epithet comes out without Alastor’s volition, and he almost apologizes, but Draco doesn’t seem to have noticed so Alastor’s not about to draw his attention to it.

“I don’t get what I was supposed to have done!” Draco whines. “I thought I was doing a good thing, but then he punched me.”

Alastor sighs. “You were, laddie. There’s just safer ways you could have done it, is all. And you should be keepin’ yer cash in your pocket—otherwise someone will try to steal it.”

“I know!” And Draco’s voice is full of despair now. “Alastor, he didn’t just punch me—he took all the money! And now everything I worked for, it’s completely lost!”

Alastor’s heart swells with sympathy; Draco, for all his flaws and persistent brattiness, doesn’t deserve to have been robbed of his entire first paycheck at fist point. “Ah, sonny. That’s a tough break, and I’m real sorry. But it ain’t the end of the world. It’s only sixty pounds.”

“Only sixty pounds?? Alastor, I worked for two weeks to earn that!”

Alastor hurries to step back his words. “I didn’ mean it like that. Course you earned it. I’m proud of yeh.” Draco flushes a bit underneath Alastor’s hand. “I just meant that in the end, you have yer life—these street robberies can go so much worse. What’s sixty pounds in comparison to that? You got away with just a bit of a mark, but that’ll heal quick, especially since I have a bruise balm we can put on it tonight."

Draco doesn’t seem convinced, and he pulls away from Alastor’s gentle ministrations. “Are you going to cane me?”

The question is so out-of-the-blue that Alastor doesn’t know what to say, or even what to think. He just stands in silence, gaping.

Draco must take that silence as affirmation though. “I won’t cry or anything. I know I deserve it, for being stupid and putting myself in an unsafe situation and losing the money I owed you. Where do you want me? Over the bed? The armchair in the living room?”

The money he _owed_ …?

“I’m really sorry,” Draco plunders on. “I know it’s a hardship to have me here and that I’m supposed to be earning my keep. It’s just, it’s really not my fault! It’s his fault.” A pouting little lilt to his voice. “But you’re right,” he says, sounding more downtrodden again. “I was stupid too. And I deserve it.”

Alastor still has no clue what Draco is saying but he knows he needs to cut off this absurd diatribe before it goes on too long. “Merlin, boy, I’m not going to cane you!”

Draco, strangely, doesn’t seem reassured by that. “What…what are you going to do, then? Hex me?

“For Merlin’s sake, boy, I’m not gonna do anythin’ like that. I’m gonna put a bruise balm on yer cheek and send yeh to bed. That’s it. Yeh’re not in trouble.”

(It disturbs Alastor, a bit, that Draco sees him as his disciplinarian, but he has to concede to himself that as his Young Parolee supervisor, that’s pretty much who Alastor is to him.)

Draco tilts his head, adorable but pitiful confusion all over his face. “But you said it yourself. I put myself in danger and, as a result, I lost your money.”

“That wasn’t my money. It was yours,” Alastor reminds him.

“But rent,” Draco counters. “You asked me to pay you rent. I thought…I thought sixty pounds every couple of weeks might be sufficient, but…”

A cold feeling settles in Alastor’s stomach. He’d been poking Draco about rent the whole time, but he’d never thought Draco took it to heart. Given how blasé Draco’s attitude had been, Alastor had assumed Draco thought it was all a big joke. “No. No. I never meant for yeh to give me your whole paycheck, laddie. I was just talking about a little extra to cover your food expenses.” Alastor uncomfortably remembers, though, having explicitly told Draco he needed to earn his keep. Looking back, could he really blame Draco for actually believing what Alastor had wanted him to believe? “The money _you_ earn from the coffee shop is _yours_ , and I want you to put it in a savings account and build yerself a nest egg with it.”

Draco appears bewildered by this new information.

“Mind you, yeh’re to _save_ that money,” Alastor adds—suddenly aware that Draco is probably an incurable spendthrift, given his upbringing. “I don’t want you goin’ around makin’ frivolous purchases just because you can. That money’s for yer freedom later on. Yeh’ll be in big trouble with me if you spend it unwisely.”

(Alastor doesn’t take the time to consider how he’ll enforce this new rule.)

“But. I don’t get it. Aren’t you mad at me?” And Merlin’s pants, Draco doesn’t even seem angry about Alastor’s continual taunts about paying rent or fazed by Alastor’s heavy-handed admonitions and actual threat of punishment—he’s only worried Alastor might be sore with him still! Alastor uneasily wonders if Draco is truly as spoiled as Alastor has been assuming he is all this time.

“I’m a little frustrated that you naively waved a stack of money in a stranger’s face,” Alastor admits begrudgingly. “But I’m not mad at yeh. You were trying to do something kind, and yeh didn’t know any better, and yeh plainly learned yer lesson. I would never punish you for getting robbed. You didn’t deserve for that to happen.”

Draco ducks his head so Alastor can’t see his face, and Alastor thinks Draco might be getting a bit overwhelmed. Or he’s unused to such easy forgiveness? “Let me go get that bruise balm,” Alastor says, wanting to leave the room to diffuse any lingering tension and avoid dealing with any of Draco’s emotions that might be festering under the surface.

Alastor returns with the medicine a few minutes later and gestures for Draco to sit on the edge of his bed. Alastor steps up in front of him and, with a finger, tilts Draco’s chin up for a better angle. The bruise is even bigger and uglier from this vantage point. Alastor doesn’t like it.

Alastor uses two fingers to scoop out a generous glob of bruise balm, which he works into Draco’s cheeks with small, circular movements. Draco tries and fails to suppress a wince. “Merlin, he really got yeh good, didn’t he boy.”

“Yeah,” Draco mumbles. “It hurts a little.”

It seems like it hurts more than a little to Alastor, but he doesn’t say anything.

“It was mostly just humiliating, though,” Draco adds a few beats later. “Big guy like him. I didn’t have a wand. I couldn’t have stopped him. So that was worse, you know? I was completely powerless to this person who hated me and didn’t give a fuck about me.”

Alastor can easily see it in his mind’s eye: a tall, burly traveler with disgusting clothes and a scowl on his face launching his fist into Draco’s unprotected cheek. Draco is small, short, kind of thin. That traveler could probably have gotten Draco’s money through a mere threat, especially given Draco's lack of a wand; but he’d been irritated with Draco’s condescending attitude and punched him needlessly. The traveler, of course, would not have had the opportunity to learn, like Alastor has, that Draco is so much more fragile and sensitive under the surface, that Draco genuinely tries to be kind but is so unpracticed that he comes across as patronizing.

Unbidden, it crosses Alastor’s mind that he’d happily kill the man who did this if he ever meets him. Not a second later, he wonders to himself, _what the hell am I thinking?_

“By the way,” Alastor grunts a moment later, “yeh said something earlier. I just want to clear this up. It’s not a hardship to have yeh here. I like havin’ yeh around.” Draco makes things interesting and keeps him company and does all the cleaning. He’s not a completely terrible roommate.

The words appear to carry a lot more force than that for Draco, who stares up at him like he’s just seen a ghost. “You… like me?”

Alastor shifts uncomfortably. He hadn’t exactly said that…

Luckily, Draco doesn’t give him a long enough chance to respond and say something foolish or hurtful. “I like you too, Alastor. Thank you for being so kind to me, even when I’m stupid.” And Draco smiles, then; just a little one, nothing like the bright, beaming grin when he got his job. But it’s enough. Alastor doesn’t say anything further, but when he finishes applying the bruise balm, he lets his tacky hand rest on Draco’s cheek a few moments longer than necessary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The minimum wage in England in 1999 was actually less than four pounds per hour--April 1, 1999, is when the first national minimum wage act was passed, and Draco would have been in the category of young people entitled to only 3 pounds per hour. https://www.statista.com/statistics/280483/national-minimum-wage-in-the-united-kingdom-uk-21-and-over/ 
> 
> As for conversion rate, 1 Galleon converts to about 5 pounds. https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Wizarding_currency So if Draco earns 32 pounds per day, he makes just a little over 6 Galleons per day.


	5. October 1999

Draco is in one of his solo sessions with Dr. Lara. He sees her twice a week, but Alastor only has to join them a couple times per month. Alastor knows it’s important for Draco if Alastor comes, so he does it, but digging deep into such intimate issues such as why he likes to punch Draco and why Draco likes to be punched is sort of embarrassing to do in front of a third party.

Alastor always waits in the waiting room for Draco to be done, though. Technically, Alastor could Apparate home and come back when the hour is up; but Alastor likes the shy little gleam of excitement in Draco’s eyes when he sees that Alastor is sitting there waiting.

Today, a month-old issue of The Quibbler that Alastor finds on the waiting room table features an article that piques Alastor’s curiosity. Is it true that an All-Seeing-Eye can see a Blibbering Humdinger, even at night? Find out inside! Alastor peruses it, shifting his hips on the hard blue chair to retain circulation in his limbs; he’s never seen a Blibbering Humdinger, unless Dolores Umbridge counts. He wonders if he made an effort to look more closely, though, if his Eye might pick one up…?

“Uh, hello, sir.”

Alastor is startled out of his musing. It’s been a while since someone managed to sneak up on him. (It’s getting harder and harder to be ‘constantly vigilant’ the older and older he gets…) A familiar man has just nabbed the seat across from him. Harry Potter looks haggard, with dark circles under his eyes and a nappy mass of jet-black hair that blurts out in every direction. His glasses are broken, but instead of using a spell, it appears Mr. Potter had repaired them with a piece of Spellotape.

“Good Quibbler?” Potter asks politely.

Alastor flashes the cover. “Have yeh heard of Blibbering Humdingers?”

Potter laughs; a sibilant sound that relieves some of the exhaustion from his features. “Oh, for sure. I’m a real magnet for them, apparently—Luna sees one near me at least every few months. Is it true you can see them with your Eye?”

“I’m lookin’ at one right now,” Alastor says with a pointed glance at Potter

Potter’s brows furrow in confusion for a moment before understanding he’s the butt of the joke. He laughs again, then settles back into his chair, draping one leg over the other in practiced relaxation. “How’s Malfoy?”

“Well enough, I s’pose.”

Potter hums. Steeples his fingers together, elbows on knobby knees. “You’re here for him, then?”

There isn’t much denying it, so even though Draco will probably flay him, Alastor nods.

“Is he doing okay? Really?”

Alastor thinks about Draco’s father, and all the suffering Draco has gone through, and about his and Draco’s fucked-up, codependent relationship, and about the emotionless way Draco still gets some days when Alastor can’t break through. But all Alastor reveals is, “Yeh can’t go to Azkaban without comin’ out a little messed up.”

Potter grins wryly and reclines further in the uncomfortable chair. “You can’t kill a genocidal psychopath without comin’ out a little messed up either.”

Alastor doesn’t doubt that Potter has a lot more demons hidden under the surface too.

Alastor looks up when he hears Draco come out of the appointment room. Draco immediately gravitates towards Alastor like Alastor is a black hole whose purpose is to steal Draco from reality and trap all his light in an endless, timeless vortex. (Except Draco is a bit too happy to be stolen for the analogy to really hold water.) But when Draco notices Potter, he raises his eyebrow questioningly at Alastor and gives Potter a skeptical glance.

“‘Lo, Malfoy.”

Draco hesitates for just a moment before he sticks out his hand. Potter takes it. Alastor does not understand why, can’t fathom what unspoken dispute Draco and Potter have just resolved, but the tension between them thankfully lessens. Draco sinks down into the chair next to Alastor; their shoulders are too close; their thighs are abutted. But Potter doesn’t seem to notice.

“I take it you’re crazy too,” Draco remarks flippantly, gesturing around the waiting room as if to say, ‘Why else would you be here?’

“No doubt about that,” Potter acquiesces with a chuckle while switching which leg is crossed. “I can see that Professor Moody is taking good care of you.”

That makes Draco blush, but his reply is touchy. “Well, Potter, as much as I like living with _Alastor_ ”—Alastor hates being called ‘Professor’ when he’d spent the entire year in a trunk—“I’m an adult man. I take care of myself.”

Potter’s grin doesn’t fade in the face of Draco’s sneering. “I know. I just meant—you seem healthy.”

Draco rolls his eyes and crosses his arms and, turning his head to the side in that adorably indignant way of his, says, “And you look like a fresh bouquet of sunflowers.”

“Merlin, Malfoy,” Potter laughs. “I’m not taking the piss. I mean it.”

“What do you care, anyway?”

“Figure I ought to care a bit about how my Young Parolee is getting on.”

“Your Young… are you one of my sponsors?!”

Potter swivels his head accusingly to Alastor. “You mean you didn’t tell him?”

Alastor just shrugs. “He never asked.”

Potter laughs almost uproariously at that while Draco splutters, “But—you—Potter!”

When Potter finally gets his mirth under control, he explains. “I can’t believe Alastor never told you. Young Parolees was Hermione’s brainchild, really. The DMLE when Voldemort controlled the Ministry was brutal and lots of people got these ridiculous sentences in Azkaban—life without parole for pro-Potter vandalism, that sort of thing. Hermione wanted—well, wants—to abolish Azkaban entirely, but even with my backing the Wizengamot would never have gone for that. But we were able to get a law passed to help the young ones who’d been sent to Azkaban when they were maybe only seventeen, eighteen, nineteen; no one wants to come out against helping kids by reducing their sentences and letting them serve the remainder of their time in freedom under the guardianship of a trained Auror. Not to mention, the proposal freed up some cell space…

“Of course, they were all a bit miffed when I invoked the law for you ten minutes after it took effect. They didn’t know you were the real reason Hermione and I even bothered with this. I’d already found you two sponsors and a willing Auror supervisor, all with stellar reputations, so it’s not like they could say no. Though they can’t deny the Chosen One much of anything,” Harry added with a bit of bitterness.

Draco opens and closes his mouth, but no sound is coming out. Potter rubs a hand through his frizzy mop as the silence stretches out awkwardly between them. “Ah, hell. I guess I should have reached out, but I figured you would owl me sooner or later. I want to start fresh, Malfoy. Put all the bullshit behind us.”

Draco snarls his fingers together agitatedly and bounces his leg up and down. But just as he’s getting ready to respond, a voice calls out from the reception desk, “Mr. Potter?”

“Oh, it’s time for my appointment.” Potter stands up and dusts imaginary debris off his jeans. “I’ll owl you, Malfoy. Professor Moody, good to see you again.”

Draco just sits in shocked silence for a few moments until Alastor nudges his leg. “Yeh ready?”

When they get outside, they’re pleasantly surprised to find the sun has poked out from behind the clouds, so they decide to walk around the park near Dr. Lara’s office. Autumn has only just begun. This time last year, Draco was in a cell. This time next year, Draco will be completely free. Draco threads his arm through Alastor’s and a light gust blows his blonde hair all scraggly on top. They stroll around a small duck pond. Children’s shrieking laughter resounds in the distance.

“Why didn’t you mention that Potter was one of my sponsors?” Draco finally asks. “And that he, y’know… stuck his neck out for me like that.”

“Merlin. I honestly didn’t think of it. I’m sorry. I figured you’d been told at some point by yer lawyer or somethin’.”

“My lawyer? Did you forget that my entire inheritance and all of the Malfoy assets were seized and I was left with nothing?”

Alastor has certainly not forgotten. “Yer _appointed_ lawyer,” Alastor clarifies, gritting his teeth a bit at Draco’s stubbornness.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means if yeh’re too poor to get a lawyer someone is appointed to represent yeh for free.” Draco’s face is blankly confused, and Alastor is getting a bad feeling. “Yeh never had a lawyer?”

“I mean… no?”

Alastor is horrified. “What did yeh do at yer trial, lad? Who spoke for yeh?”

“…my trial? I didn’t have a trial…”

The picture is painted all too easily. A seventeen-year-old tossed into a cell in Azkaban without due process or any representation, no one the wiser because all the people who were supposed to care about him were also in prison. And frankly never cared about him either.

“Yeh’re supposed to get a lawyer, and a trial. It ain’t right. You can sue for this kind of—”

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Draco laughs. “Even in the totally-make-believe world where I have the money for lawsuits, there’s no jury in all the Wizarding World who would side with me. About anything.”

 _I would_ , Alastor thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He can’t help but wish he’d been able to help Draco earlier. Draco must have been so cold. He can’t stop imagining Draco shivering on the stone Azkaban cot. He’d turned eighteen by himself in a cell. Maybe holding his tears inside; or worse, maybe not wanting to cry at all, but instead spending hours staring blankly at the concrete.

Draco knows Alastor’s dark thoughts, and chides him—‘Stop worrying about me, old man’—so Alastor changes the subject. “How was yer appointment?”

“Oh, fine,” he responds politely. “Dr. Lara says to tell you hello.”

Draco always does this after therapy. Makes Alastor dig, just a bit. It’s some sort of reassurance thing, Alastor thinks; it comforts Draco to know Alastor is curious. So Alastor always presses for information, even though it kind of annoys him since they always get to the same place in the end anyways. “What did you talk about, lad?”

“Oh. Right. Well. We talked about expectations today. My expectations of others; of myself; what I think people expect of me.”

When Draco goes silent again, Alastor pushes again. “And? What is it you expect of yourself?”

Draco cocks his head, bites his lip. Considering. “I told her, I expect myself to be… perfect.” He’s quiet for a second. “But then she asked me what perfect meant. What kind of question is that? It seems sort of obvious, doesn’t it? So I said I guess it means that I’m successful, and I have money, and I don’t embarrass my family, and I keep my emotions under control, all those things. And she asked me, well Draco, why do you think those things are perfect?”

Alastor lets Draco be quiet for a few moments as they meander, and another cool breeze skates across the mown lawn, rustling some tawny leaves from a nearby hazel into descent. The gravel path makes a light crunching noise with each of their steps; sometimes, there’s the more satisfying sound of a freshly-fallen leaf underfoot. The pond is still and glassy.

“I couldn’t answer her,” Draco finally says. “I didn’t know why I thought those things were perfect. And I guess those things aren’t perfect. I mean, I still want to be successful and make money. No offense.”

Alastor takes more offense at the ‘no offense’ than anything else.

“And it’s not like I want to go around embarrassing you in public or losing my cool like I did at the Gala. But like.” Draco ducks his head; a crimson blush saturating his face. “In private it’s okay to be emotional with you. I can cry and rage and plead and you always say it’s okay. It was never okay before, with Lucius.”

Alastor is touched: both that Draco feels comfortable sharing these things with him, and because Draco is openly acknowledging him as ‘family.’

“I told Dr. Lara that, about how you let me show all my emotions.”

… “And?”

Draco tilts his head upward, a pleased little glint in his eye. “She says she likes you more and more the more she gets to know you.” Then Draco grins saucily and adds, “I told her I agreed—you’re a terror to get to know at first. So ornery.”

Alastor rolls his eyes and darts his hand to Draco’s outer thigh. Pinches it. “Careful, lad. I might decide to be extra ornery tonight in retaliation.”

Draco tightens his grip around Alastor’s arm just a bit. Alastor thinks he wants some orneriness tonight. Then Draco ventures, tentatively, “So… you don’t think I need to be perfect?”

It’s on the tip of Alastor’s tongue: ‘You’re already perfect.’ But as much as Alastor believes it, it’s not true, and it’s not what Draco needs to hear.

“Well, lad, those things you said, I don’t think that’s what perfect means either. But whatever perfect is, you don’t need to be that. Yeh just need to be you.”

***

When they return home that evening, after Draco takes off his thrift store jacket and hangs up Alastor’s trench coat for him on the hook by the door and exhorts Alastor to cast several dozen Warming Charms, and they’re lying together in Alastor’s bed, facing each other on their sides in nightclothes, Alastor commands him: “Ask me.”

“Ask you what?”

“Don’t play coy with me, little boy,” Alastor reproaches, threading his fingers through Draco’s hair. Alastor knows what Draco wants tonight. But Draco needs to say it.

“Daddy. Um.” Draco gulps. Sometimes he’s so straightforward; and sometimes he gets shy like this, timid, like he thinks Alastor will tell him no. (This flipflopping uncertainty a product of his variable moods; isn’t it plain as day that Alastor’s never going to say no to him?) “Will you please be mean to me tonight?” Draco finally mumbles.

“What type of mean do you want?”

“W-whatever you want.”

Alastor tightens his grip just a bit as a rebuke. “That doesn’t cut it tonight, lad.”

Draco groans; he tilts his head back, exposing the pale, slender column of his neck. Alastor has no doubt he’s trying to entice Alastor into mauling it before they’ve completed their negotiations, and though Alastor wants to, that won’t do, so he resists. (Okay, so maybe Alastor can tell him no when necessary.)

“I can’t say,” Draco finally murmurs when it’s clear Alastor hasn’t taken the bait.

“You can, and you will.” Alastor doesn’t offer a sliver of mercy, because that’s not what Draco needs.

“Merlin,” and it’s a throaty gasp. “Please. Tie me up. And hit me.”

“Hand? Cane? Hexes?”

“Ungh,” and Draco bucks his hard, leaking prick against Alastor’s groin several times through the flimsy pyjamas. “F-fists.”

Alastor pulls back and lands a solid jab on Draco’s stomach, causing the air to whoosh out of Draco’s lungs in a sharp gasp. Then Alastor snakes his hand under Draco’s shirt, rubbing and soothing the target of the blow. “Was that enough for yeh?” Alastor whispers.

Draco moans pitifully, but doesn’t answer.

“Tell me.” And Alastor feels a certain sadistic satisfaction at forcing Draco to vocalize his desires—he feeds off Draco’s squirmy embarrassment. But Alastor knows there’s timidity there, too; Draco’s internalized lack of self-worth rearing its ugly head, telling Draco, ‘You don’t get to ask for things. You’re not worthy of getting what you want.’ Alastor vows, again, to spend the rest of his life breaking down those internal walls piece by piece. Punch by punch.

“Please, more. I need more. I want you to make it really hurt.”

“I’ll give yeh a 6 out of 10 for specificity,” Alastor mutters. “But good enough. Tell me yer safeword.”

“Ungh, Alastor, please, you already know—”

“Draco. Tell me now, right now, or this is over and I’m going to roll over and go to sleep.”

“ _Rouge_ , Alastor, it’s _rouge_ , but please, _vert_ , I’m so _vert_ , please don’t stop—”

Alastor punches Draco’s stomach again, using more force than he probably should without warming Draco up, and this one induces tears. “Stand up and take off all your clothes.”

Draco scrambles to obey, and less than ten seconds later stands, naked, at attention, next to the bed. Alastor peruses Draco from his prone position for a moment. “Stand still, right there. Hell, you’re so pretty,” Alastor mutters, shoving one of his hands underneath his own pyjamas and lazily playing with his cock. “Maybe I’ll get off just like this. Just watchin' yeh. And make you go to bed with an aching prick.”

“Please, Alastor, noooo…” (But Draco’s cock is gushing.)

Alastor takes off his clothes and then settles his back against the headboard, jacking himself slowly as Draco stands in perfect stillness. Such an obedient little thing. “Turn around. Bend over. Let me see yer hole.”

It’s undoubtedly humiliating for Draco, which is why Alastor makes him do it. “Merlin,” he breathes. Draco’s hole is pink and hairless (Alastor’s seen him shave it in the shower), and even now, after months of fucking, it’s barely a pinprick between the globes of Draco’s cheeks. Alastor can’t resist the desire to touch him, so he surges from the bed and, using his pelvis as a bludgeon, shoves Draco forward with tremendous force—Draco stumbles, almost falling onto his palms, and ends up pinned against the bedroom wall, the crown of his head just barely protected by his hands. (Alastor makes sure.) Alastor thrusts more, compressing Draco further until the two unyielding forces on either side of him bend him nearly double.

Alastor teases (threatens) Draco’s hole with the tip of his cock. Alastor hasn’t lubed up and Draco isn’t prepped. Though Draco would undoubtedly find a dry, painful fuck just as mean and satisfying, Alastor wants to make sure Draco gets what he originally asked for, so Alastor draws back enough to give Draco room to stand back straight. “Later,” Alastor promises.

Alastor manhandles Draco to a spot by the foot of the bed where a low rafter cuts across the ceiling. “Hands up,” Alastor orders, and when Draco obeys, Alastor Summons rope and a set of metal handcuffs from the nightstand—Muggle police cuffs, so Alastor can’t leave Draco in them too awfully long. Alastor attaches the rope to the cuffs and spells the rope to the rafters. He doesn’t lift Draco enough for his feet to come off the ground, but he sets the rope at such a height that Draco is forced to extend and display his flat, nearly concave stomach. It would be impossible, without lifting his feet and straining his wrists, for Draco to curl in on himself to protect his vital organs.

Alastor starts by alternating light jabs and slaps to Draco’s solar plexus to warm him up. They’re not hard enough to make Draco cry. He grunts and wheezes, a bit, and Alastor builds up a red, splotchy stain above Draco’s belly button.

“Look at this,” Alastor mutters, stroking the new blemish gently. Draco, whose eyes had been squeezed shut, forces himself to obey the command. “This is my mark,” Alastor explains. “It’s proof that you’re my property.”

“I’m…yours…”

Alastor draws his elbow back in order to deliver a more substantial wallop—the kind that would make a schoolboy give up his lunch money. “Maybe I should brand you,” Alastor muses, circling Draco once. Gifting Draco a few light smacks to his arse. “Where would I do it, though… here?” Alastor punches Draco’s right butt cheek, purposefully extending his knuckles to inflict a sting. “Or maybe here,” Alastor breathes into the meat of Draco’s left shoulder before biting down, hard. “Or perhaps here.” Alastor comes back around to the front and squeezes Draco’s balls, eliciting a painful whimper. “I could just brand you in all of those places. Less room for error.

“Now what would the brand say? Could be something simple—A.M.” Alastor reaches around Draco and scratches that into the flesh of his arse with a fingernail. “Or Property of A.M. Or maybe something a bit more exciting. How about, Alastor’s Fuckdoll? Daddy’s Punch-and-Fuck Toy?”

Draco likes the latter suggestions the best; or at least, his cock does.

“I’ll have to special order it from some Muggles, you know. Any Wizarding blacksmith would faint if they had to make Alastor Moody a branding rod. I might have to get a few different types and experiment with them in different places. I’ll burn your stomach, your kidneys, your nipples. Merlin, maybe I’ll do the bottom of your feet, so you can’t even walk. You’ll have to crawl, and eat your meals on the ground.” Alastor punctuates that heady image with another punch to Draco’s stomach, which causes Draco to wobble before regaining his balance. Alastor gives several more of those in rapid succession to elicit a gurgle

“Ah, you love my fists,” Alastor taunts when tears begin streaming out of Draco’s eyes and his cock wilts from the onslaught. “Say it.”

“Love…”

Alastor lets loose his full strength in a single strike, and it knocks the wind right out of Draco’s lungs. Draco’s knees buckle, but he manages to stay on his feet. So he can handle a few more of those. Or maybe a lot more of those. Alastor keeps hitting, alternating now between jabbing and boring. Bracing Draco’s shoulder with one hand, he sinks his other fist into the patch of skin right above Draco’s cock, tunneling a hole through Draco’s guts. Draco’s mouth is opening and closing but nothing’s coming out but, “Ah, ah.

Alastor then drags his knuckles down the side of Draco’s face. Wiping up his tears.

“Puh-puh…please… face…”

“No.” But Alastor compromises and slaps Draco across his cheek with a palm. “You know I won’t punch you in the head, no matter how much you beg for it,” Alastor scolds as he soothes the sting with his hand.

“I know… you said, ‘history of head… injuries’… slap’s enough…”

Alastor smacks his face again. “Exactly right, my good boy. We have to protect this lovely brain of yers. Only face slapping. I won’t punch yeh or hit yeh anywhere else on this beautiful blonde head.”

Draco whines like a petulant child. Alastor knows he wants Alastor to punch him in the nose—he wants Alastor (only Alastor) to make him bleed and break the cartilage. Sometimes, even now, Alastor is afraid of the depth of Draco’s desire for him. Frightened of how far Draco wants him to go and how much he wants Alastor to make him hurt. (Alastor is also frightened of how much wants to give in sometimes and let loose his fist on Draco’s unprotected face. But he won’t do that.) _At least_ , Alastor thinks, regaining control, _I’m here to protect him. A bit._

Alastor strikes Draco’s stomach again, and Draco’s legs are beginning to quake. Alastor wants to see him hit the limit. “You can take a few more,” Alastor remarks, so he delivers a few more. Draco’s nose is overflowing with snot and it’s getting harder for him to breathe, and Alastor thinks Draco has probably been in the cuffs for too long by this point, but Alastor’s not quite ready. “What do you think, my dear boy? Is that enough?”

“One…more…”

Alastor winds up for this final one. He needs to make it count. He thinks about Lucius Malfoy, and the Death Eaters, and about Draco being by himself in a cell for months because no one cared if he lived or died. He channels all his possessive, murderous rage into his fist and absolutely slugs Draco’s belly. This powerful blow buckles Draco’s knees, and, no longer able to hold himself up, Draco dangles like a ragdoll from the rafter.

Alastor immediately hoists Draco up and Banishes the rope and cuffs, not wanting Draco to put all his weight on his wrists. Draco collapses into Alastor, tears tracking down his reddened cheeks. Alastor lies Draco down on his back on the bed and softly strokes his limp prick. It doesn’t wake back up. That Draco never came shouldn’t turn Alastor on, but it really, really does. “How was that, my darling?”

Draco mutters something unintelligible. Alastor chuckles and leans over him, placing a soft kiss on his lips.

“Alastor, wha’bou’you?” Draco attempts to lift a hand, but he can’t keep it up.

“No need to worry, dearest.” Alastor had been planning to fuck Draco dry at the end, but apparently the punching took a little too much out of Draco for that. Anyways, it was for the best: when Alastor stands up next to the bed and looks at Draco’s bruising belly and abused cheeks and satisfied smile, he can only hold out for a few strokes. He points his cock at Draco’s head and explodes in Draco’s hair. Some cum drips down Draco’s temple and slots into his ear canal. 

“That’s kinda…nasty,” Draco murmurs with a sleepy grin. Almost immediately he drops off into a doze, and Alastor takes advantage of Draco’s unconsciousness to apply a healing balm without Draco whinging about wanting to ‘feel it.’ Alastor uses a spell to remove the cum from Draco’s ear, but he leaves the rest to mat in Draco’s hair. It’s harmless, and it’s always funny to see Draco scowl about cum in his hair in the morning. 


	6. July 1999

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is kind of sad, but don't worry, things won't always be like this for Alastor and Draco.

Having a ‘relationship’ with Draco Malfoy is a lot like being the owner of a slightly-feral human-sized cat with thoughts and feelings. They’ve been ‘together’ almost two months, and Draco is as difficult a housemate as he’s been since the beginning—but now his difficultness manifests in new, unforeseen ways. Cleaning, for example, was always Draco’s task, but Alastor always had to force him into it. Now it feels wrong to threaten Draco with discipline if he doesn’t clean up his dishes or pick up his dirty towel off the floor—certainly not when they’ll go to bed later that evening and Alastor will beat him and rough-fuck him to within an inch of his life. But Alastor made the mistake of reassuring a tearful Draco that he’d never punish him for not doing his chores in the same way he punished him in bed, and now Draco’s become an incurably lazy sod who isn’t cowed by Alastor’s empty threats.

But then every two weeks or so, like clockwork, Draco starts to feels guilty for his lack of contribution to the cottage. Last time the urge hit him, he dropped by Tesco’s on the way home from work and picked up three Muggle cleaning products at random which, when mixed together by a frantic blonde twit, released a noxious gas that permeated the house. (Alastor fixed it. And again, assured a weeping Draco that no, he wouldn’t cane him for nearly murdering them both.)

Besides his idleness, Draco does manage to do a decent job talking to Alastor when Alastor wants to talk and being quiet when Alastor wants him to be quiet and saying please and thank you and otherwise being an agreeable roommate. Except that now that he and Draco are fucking and Draco’s guard is down, there are days when Draco becomes viciously unpleasant for no reason at all, saying things like that “the bloody toilet won’t bloody flush and I won’t have a wand til next year so you’d better bloody fix that today or else” and how if Alastor had any sense he would sell this “stupid, broken-down cottage” while the market is right and buy a place that “isn’t about to be blown over by the next light gust.”

(No Draco, I’m not mad anymore. Yes, it’s okay. I know yeh didn’t mean it; I know yeh like livin’ here.)

But Alastor can handle those things. Okay, so he has to take a few (and a few more) swigs from his flask sometimes to quell his temper but Alastor manages.

The worst thing though, the thing that makes Alastor swell with affection and pity and rage, is that for all that Draco seems to clearly thrive on submitting to Alastor’s dark desires, Draco has trouble demarcating his boundaries—sometimes, Draco doesn’t even know he has a boundary that’s been crossed.

In fairness to Draco, he plainly craves most everything that Alastor does. Alastor can fuck him senseless and bruise his hips and pull his hair and snarl in rage and Draco just moans, “Daddy, please, more.” Christ, Draco had once spontaneously orgasmed from a punch to the stomach, so Alastor had begun experimenting with more intense play—spanking, slapping, biting so hard he draws blood. Draco’s eyes when he’s being hurt (so bright, so full of emotion), and then his light, cheery moods in the mornings after, convince Alastor that this type of relationship is good for Draco.

But then come the times when Alastor says something wrong, or does something that reminds Draco a bit of his past, or even when Draco’s just plain not in the mood, and no matter how much Alastor reminds him that he needs to _use his fucking safeword_ when that happens, it seems like Draco can’t—or won’t—open his fucking mouth. It honestly doesn’t seem to be intentional most of the time—Alastor breaches a boundary and Draco goes all quiet and listless and “Yes sir,” instead of “Please, Daddy,” and that makes Alastor’s stomach curdle. So when that happens Alastor stops and cuddles Draco to sleep without going any further and catalogues the instance to remind himself going forward never to do (x, y, z) ever again. Even if Draco had never asked him to stop.

But occasionally Draco makes it hard to tell that something’s wrong, and that’s what frightens Alastor most.

Take for example: The Bad Day at Work. Draco tells him later that the temperature was pleasantly cool and sprogs were scampering through the streets, pint-sized terrors all giggles and screams. Draco walked home through the pandemonium clutching his head. A dehydration headache throbbed objectionably inside his skull.

Alastor greeted Draco with unabashed cheer. Alastor worked in the garden all day and the results were splendid: the gnomes may finally be gone this time! (They never were, but an old man can dream.) Alastor then came inside to clean (because Draco hadn't done it yet) and the results were excellent: bookshelves dusted, chimney swept, floorboards scoured with spells and soapsuds.

Alastor hasn’t showered and he wants to relax in the way he likes best, so he approaches Draco, still taking his café shoes off at the doorway, and tilts Draco’s chin to the ceiling with an autocratic index finger.

“Draco, my darling, can I be mean to you tonight?”

Of course Alastor learns later that Draco’s head was pulsing and some children bumped him into a building and Higher Grounds today was like a scene straight from hell: hundreds of tourists stopping in for iced drinks, thousands of them asking why the bloody hell this coffee shop doesn’t serve “frap-you-cheen-os.” (Draco had mastered the bored glare at these types, though frankly he’s still not sure what the Muggles are talking about.) Several machines broke. They ran out of ice (the one bloody ingredient that we need for all the bloody drinks, Alastor!) and also mocha syrup and also egg-and-cheese breakfast sandwiches and near the end of the day, one customer threw her drink at Draco’s head (a near miss).

But instead of saying that he didn’t want to, Draco gives Alastor a shy grin and mumbles, “If that’s what you want, Daddy.” ('Alastor, it wasn’t that I didn’t _want_ to! I was just tired!' Draco gripes at him in therapy some weeks later.)

It takes more than ten minutes for Alastor to feel an itch in the back of his brain that he can’t put his finger on. Draco is moaning and calling him Daddy and asking for more. Alastor has pulled him up by his hair, dragged him into the bedroom, thrown him face-first into the mattress, and begun to frot: muttering nonsense like that Draco is beautiful and how Alastor can’t wait to split him open and make him cry. Alastor punctuates the drivel with a slap to Draco’s arse, and when hard hand meets hard cheek, that’s when Alastor figures it out. Draco’s muscles are stiff, meaning Draco’s body isn’t accepting Alastor’s abuse. He’s just enduring.

Alastor eases back a bit, regretfully separating his cock from Draco’s thighs. “Draco?” he mutters. “Yeh alright there, lad?”

Draco swivels his head back over his shoulder. “Of course, Daddy. I’m so alright. Please, don’t stop.”

But now that Alastor’s paying better attention, his voice sounds a bit robotic too. He’s saying the phrases he always says but they sound rehearsed, like Draco has only memorized them and is trying to get them out in the right order. So completely different from how he said that last night, and the night before, and the night before that.

Alastor rolls over onto his back, panting a bit and trying to suppress his hard-on. “Yeh don’ seem alright. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Draco lunges, straddling Alastor’s waist and grinding down his hips and clamping his fists into Alastor’s shirt, and it’s vicious—the most dominant Alastor’s ever seen him. “I need you, Daddy,” Draco grits out, but he doesn’t sound like he sounds when he needs Daddy. Alastor doesn’t like the way he sounds. Despite the friction, his erection flags.

“Draco! For Merlin’s sake.” Alastor grips Draco’s biceps to force him still. “I need yeh to stop for a tick.”

Draco fights the hold but Alastor is far bigger and far stronger and it’s not an even match. “Please, I want this,” Draco begins to sob.

“Laddie, I don’t think yeh want this.”

Draco goes limp. He’s full-blown crying but still trying to oscillate his hips. Alastor has to manhandle him to the other side of the bed; Draco turns away and weeps in the fetal position, a pillow crushed between his thighs and wrists. Alastor likes to see Draco cry, but even his fucked-up sadistic brain can distinguish between a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ cry—the ‘good’ cry being the cry that’s caused by Alastor and the ‘bad’ cry being the cry that’s caused by anything else.

Alastor lays behind him, not touching or speaking, close enough so that Draco can feel the heat of Alastor wrapping him up. He’s not sure what Draco wants or needs; he has no idea what Draco’s even thinking.

Draco eventually manages to bring his tears to a halting conclusion. Alastor reaches out to touch him then, just a brief glance to the nape of the neck between the collar and the blonde fringe with calloused fingertips. Draco shudders.

“I-I’m sorry,” Draco says. Wobbly. “I’m so sorry.”

“Why’re yeh sorry, dear heart?

“I don’t want you to be mean tonight. I’m sorry. I tried, really. I’m sorry.”

This is giving Alastor a bad feeling. “What do yeh mean you _tried_?”

“Just,” sniff, “I tried to get into it. I thought I would. You’re always so sexy to me.”

Alastor ignores that and says, “Are you sayin’ you told me yes when yeh really wanted to tell me no?”

“N-no. I mean, yes, I guess—I didn’t _want_ to want to say no.” He’s like an injured animal intentionally hiding his wounds from his human; trying to pretend things are just fine when he’s bleeding to death. And Alastor should want to make Draco feel better but he can’t because he feels pissed…and betrayed.

Alastor sits up and levers his legs over the side of the bed. He keeps his back to Draco. Draco is palpably miserable but Alastor’s so mad he feels like he could punch a hole through the solid wall so it’s probably better not to touch him.

Alastor hears Draco shifting around behind him, and a quiet, “Daddy, please, I’m sorry,” but he can’t listen to it right now. He pulls himself to standing (agh, these muscles aren’t as limber as they were in his youth) and lumbers out of the bedroom without a word. He plops into one of the armchairs in front of the unlit fireplace.

Draco doesn’t come out for a while, which is good because Alastor needs time to cool off. When Draco does emerge, his eyes are puffy, but his emotions are gone, buried in the distant part of himself where he goes when he thinks he’s about to confront Lucius Malfoy.

But this conversation has to happen whether Draco wants it to or not. “Sit down.”

Draco sits in the other armchair. His body is unnaturally still. He looks at Alastor but he doesn’t make eye contact; his gaze settles, instead, somewhere above Alastor’s shoulder and a little to the right.

“Draco. Tell me yeh understand why I’m so mad.”

“I am too difficult.” And oh goody, Formal Draco has come out to play.

Alastor admittedly has been thinking that exact phrase— _difficult_ —the entire time he and Draco have lived together, and even more frequently now that he and Draco are ‘together.’ But Formal Draco doesn’t sound like he’s saying at all the same thing Alastor is thinking. “Elaborate.”

“I was unable to give you a satisfactory experience today, nor can I ever because I am too broken by the specters of my past. You’re always having to stop and make sure I’m okay. I’m a disappointing lover, and also discourteous and disrespectful and ungrateful and a pain around the house, and I’ve done nothing but make your life difficult since I came. It’s an unfair exchange; I take and I take and I take and give nothing back. And you’re fed up.”

The words come fast and clipped and monotone and they don’t make any sense to Alastor but before he can formulate anything resembling an adequate response, Draco begins to babble some more gibberish, his formal tone breaking into something more tremulous and frightened. “But I swear I’ll try harder going forward, Alastor. I’ll learn to be better for you! I am trying, really—”

“Sweet Merlin, boy, what are yeh even sayin’?” Alastor cuts off the nonsense then and crosses the short distance between the chairs and grasps both Draco’s upper arms—not shaking sense into him but wanting to, dear God. “Draco, yeh’re off the rails, love. I don’t think any ‘a that.”

“You’re mad at me because I’m a disappointment,” Draco reiterates, though he sounds less sure than before.

“Yeh’re not a disappointment. At all. I don’t know why you think that.” Alastor slides down to his knees, resting his arms on Draco’s thighs and clutching Draco’s hands between his. Draco stares somewhere off to the side.

“I should be able to give you everything you need,” Draco mutters, monotone. “But I’m so selfish. I must seem like such a filthy tease to you—tensing up and getting all weepy over nothing. You fucked me like that yesterday, and I wanted it so bad, and I wanted it so bad the day before that too. There’s no reason I shouldn’t want it that way today too. I don’t even know what’s wrong with me. I’m so inconsiderate!”

Alastor thinks that perhaps he needs to change their dynamic to pull Draco out of this downward spiral. Alastor stands up; rests one hand on the arm of the chair. Leans down to take up Draco’s space, not even trying to keep his end-of-the-day breath out of Draco’s face. Alastor surges his other hand into Draco’s hair and he pulls, hard. “Draco. Look at me. I said, look at me!”

Draco finally does, and eye contact is all it takes for him to break down again. Alastor doesn’t let go of his hair. Tears are streaming down Draco’s face, and they’re the bad kind, and for the first time Alastor realizes that whatever it is that’s wrong with Draco, the thing that destabilizes his moods and destroys his self-esteem, Alastor might not be able to fix on his own. Merlin, maybe this thing with Alastor just makes everything worse.

“You’re not a disappointment. Repeat that after me!”

“I-I’m not a disappointment…”

“Say it again. Try to sound confident, would yeh?”

“I’m not a disappointment.” But Draco really doesn’t sound any surer.

Alastor bends his knees and shoehorns them between Draco’s thighs and the arms of the chair. Closing Draco up tight with a straddle. Resting his body weight on Draco’s body; wrapping both arms around the back of Draco’s head, pressing him between Alastor’s chest and the back of the chair. If anyone had been watching, all they’d have thought was that a crazy old man was sitting backwards in his armchair because Draco was fully erased from visibility inside of Alastor’s gluttonous embrace. “I could never be disappointed in you, my sweet boy,” Alastor murmurs down into the top of Draco’s head. “Merlin and Arthur, you always satisfy me.”

“Not tonight,” Draco responds dully, voice distorted by Alastor’s bulk.

“Yeh’re… Draco, I don’t think yeh understand. You know I don’t _want_ you to say yes when you want to say no?”

Draco says nothing.

“I know that you like it when I hit you. And you know that I like to hit you. But I don’t want to hit yeh if yeh’re not into it. It doesn’t disappoint me if you tell me you don’t want to do something—it disappoints me if you _don’t_ tell me. Do you understand that?”

“But what use am I, if I can just say no whenever I don’t feel like it?”

The certainty in Draco’s voice makes Alastor want to sob too. Instead he traps Draco harder and tries to convey his thoughts through his body. “Yeh don’ gotta be useful, dear heart,” he says, barely an exhale. “I don’t care about yeh because yeh’re useful. I care about yeh because yeh’re you. A bright, spunky, _good_ young man whose affection is a gift, however little I deserve it. I treasure you so.

“And I’m pissed because I treasure you so. God, boy, did you even think how I would feel? If I’d figured it out too late? If I’d become one of _them_ , without even knowin’ I was doin’ it?”

“Alastor, I’m sorry!” Draco wails into his chest.

“I know, lad. But I’m worried yeh’re sorry for the wrong reasons. Has this happened before? Have you let me fuck you or hurt you when you didn’t want me to? Tell me the truth or I swear I’ll—”

“No, I swear, Alastor, this is the first time,” Draco babbles. “I’m just so tired tonight, is all, I still want you, I’m just tired, but I thought I’d be okay once we started.”

“Draco, yeh’re telling me tonight’s the first time, but I know you’ve not used your safeword before—I usually pick up on it a lot quicker. Have yeh been buildin’ up these bad thoughts this whole time we’ve been fucking? Tell me the truth. Have I ever fucked you when you didn’t want it?”

“Oh God,” Draco moans. “There was once. Just one other time that I didn’t tell you. I swear. It was just one other time.”

As soon as Draco says it the pieces fall into place and Alastor easily picks out when it was. About two weeks ago; not a particularly rough night but Alastor had slapped him and pushed his cock in with just the bare minimum of lubricant. Draco was overly quiet when Alastor’s cock receded; Draco asked if he could sleep in Alastor’s room when they finished even though he always assumes he can; Draco described, the next morning, having had had a challenging day at work the day before. Yes, that was the time—Draco didn’t want to be fucked that day. Draco didn’t want to be slapped that day. And Alastor can feel something inside him crumble and die.

Draco’s arms find their way from the flesh cage and wend around Alastor’s back. “Please don’t go. Please don’t send me away. Please forgive me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

The sheer wrongness of Draco asking Alastor to forgive him for this.

“I’m not goin’ anywhere,” Alastor murmurs. Promises. Draco’s head underneath his hands; pressing a kiss to Draco’s crown, a desperate one, not aroused but passionate with some emotion that perhaps he’d felt about some other poor sod back when he was in his twenties—protect, claim, own, tear out all the bad cries and replace them with the good, find Lucius Malfoy and rend him limb from limb, a vicious proprietary rage that can only be soothed by caging Draco safe. And immense, deserved guilt. “I’ve been derelict in my responsibility to yeh. I failed to keep you safe.” _From me._

“Please, it’s not your fault, it’s mine, it’s all mine—”

A feeling Alastor doesn’t let himself feel much swells up at Draco’s remorseless acceptance of fault for Alastor’s failure. Draco’s hair becomes soggy with salt. Alastor doesn’t stop crying for a long time.


	7. March 1999

The first Ministry function Alastor takes Draco to is the 1999 Mid-Winter Charity Gala. He wouldn’t even be going if Draco hadn’t begged and pleaded. This year the Gala is raising funds for war orphans or some such nonsense. Alastor can never be arsed to keep track of these things.

He has to buy Draco a new set of dress robes for the occasion or face Draco’s whinging. Alastor, I’ll look so out of place! The robes are a deep, professional blue tailored perfectly to Draco’s frame. Draco also wheedled out of Alastor a fancy new pair of dragonhide boots, a comfortable and efficient set of black slacks, and a crisp white dress shirt. (Alastor lets Draco borrow a tie.) “This all costs more than your weekly paycheck,” Alastor grumbles as he hands a heavy handful of galleons across to the tailor.

“I’ll pay you back one day,” Draco promises, looking just a bit anxious. Alastor hates that look. “And I’ve got a bit in savings now that I’ve started working—we can set up a payment schedule now, if you like—”

“Nah, don’tchu worry, my lad,” Alastor consoles, feeling a bit sheepish at having roused Draco’s nerves. “That’s yer nest egg. And you need some nice things.”

Now at the Gala, Alastor is pleased with his purchases. With confidence due in large part to having a fitting pair of dress robes, Draco circulates through the room like he belongs there. If it weren’t for the unavoidable fact that everyone knows who Draco is and what he’s done, an observer would never guess that barely two months prior Draco had been languishing in a cell.

He seems so Good, some nameless Ministry pencil-pusher remarks to Alastor. You’ve really done a number on him. Nah, Alastor responds. That’s all him. That’s just who Draco is.

***

But old habits die hard, Alastor supposes.

***

Alastor finds Draco gazing blankly out a window in a side conference room. The room is completely dark but for a faint orangish glow from a street lamp outside that casts a strange pallor over Draco’s listless features.

Alastor takes a few steps into the room; closes the door behind him. He feels a strange mix of irritation that Draco was rude to one of his friends and desire to comfort him because he’s clearly unhappy. Irritation wins out. “Minerva McGonagall is one of yer sponsors, y’know. She’s the only reason you got of that cell.”

“Bully for her.” Draco doesn’t look away from the window.

Alastor tries to rein in his annoyance, but tonight has tried his meager capacity for patience. “It would do fer yeh to be a bit more grateful to those who’re helpin’ yeh out. I can’t say callin’ her an out-of-touch old maid right to her face, and in front of one of her former students, really counts as gratitude.”

Alastor feels justified in scolding Draco. All Minnie had done was tell Draco he seemed well; that the Young Parolees Initiative was a good look for him. Maybe it was because Neville Longbottom had been standing next to her with a glass of champagne in his hand, but Draco had not taken Minnie’s compliments with very much grace. Alastor had had to stay behind to smooth things over with Minnie and Longbottom before rushing after him.

Draco looks a bit ashamed now, but his response still comes out nasty. “Oh, come off it. McGonagall hates me anyway; and Longbottom thinks I’m using my job at the coffee shop to find my next victims.”

It was true that the Neville boy had sounded far too interested in Draco’s new _Muggle_ job; and far too eager to warn Alastor, out of Draco’s earshot, that a close eye should be kept on Draco while he was at work, because _he hates Muggles, y’know?_

Alastor eases up beside him. From the window Alastor can see a Muggle street where a streetlamp illuminates some snowflakes as they descend. It’s late, and no one’s out. Alastor is annoyed, still, but Draco is probably entitled to being upset and Alastor doesn’t really want to fight. “Let’s just go home,” he grumbles.

“I suppose you were having a blast with those two after I left, reminiscing about all my childhood tomfooleries.”

Alastor frowns. He, of course, can’t participate in any reminiscing because he’d never actually been a Hogwarts professor and thus has nothing to reminisce about, which Draco well knows.

“Well, just in case Longbottom didn’t tell you everything I’ve ever done, I can tell you. I bullied him something awful—mostly just in First Year, because he was so bad at magic that it got boring for me and Crabbe and Goyle to overpower him every time. We made fun of him in class. Called him names. Hexed him when he was by himself in the halls. Merlin, I purposefully sabotaged him in Potions because I knew Severus would side with me. What an arsehole of a teacher he was. Then Longbottom goes on to become a hero while I…

“Well, anyway, I’m sure Longbottom has a whole catalogue of stories to tell about the stupid, selfish things I did to everyone else too. Here’s one: I insulted a Hippogriff _to its face_ , like a complete dunderhead, and of course the beast gored me. My fault entirely. I see that now, but I was so shortsighted! I wrote a letter to Lucius—Daddy, I’ve been injured terribly by a feral beast! And Lucius was angry, because he understood that I was culpable, but appearances are everything for the Malfoys, so the only way to solve that disaster was to have Buckbeak _executed_.” Draco’s breath hitches suspiciously. “An innocent creature died because I was a baby.”

Alastor has no idea how to respond, but he knows he needs to comfort Draco somehow. “Sonny, didn’t yeh know that Buckbeak’s still alive?”

Draco’s eyes go wide. Merlin, he really didn’t know?

“Ah hell, laddie, don’ tell me yeh’ve been carryin’ around guilt about that for all these years. Buckbeak’s fine. Potter owns him. Saved his life. Some sort of… time travel?” And that stupid animal stunk up the Order headquarters something fierce, though Alastor doesn’t add that part.

Alastor expects this news to be a relief, but it only seems to draw out a tearful wheeze, which makes Alastor realize that Draco’s about to cry and that he’s never seen him cry. He’s honestly never even thought about him crying; Alastor figured it just wasn’t something Malfoys did.

“I haven’t even started on Potter. Potter was always so effortlessly good.” Draco’s voice snaps on the ‘good,’ bitter and watery. “At eleven, I stole Longbottom’s Remembrall, and what does Potter do? He goes after it and winds up the first First Year on the Quidditch team in centuries or something.

“I was thirteen when my friends and I got a brilliant idea—let’s pretend to be Dementors at the next Quidditch match! He’d fallen off his broom, you see, when the actual Dementors showed up before. Well here’s how it went down: Potter, like the ridiculous prat he is, learned a _Patronus Charm_ at the age of thirteen, so he didn’t fall, he impressed the school with a fully corporeal Patronus, and he caught the Snitch. I was the arsehole who tried to knock the Savior-of-Peace-and-all-that-is-Good off his broom.

“I can go on and on, you know. When I was fourteen I tried to curse him from behind like a sniveling coward—that imposter Moody turned me into a ferret, and I never heard the end of that. When I was fifteen I joined a group of junior fascists so I could snuff out the Dumbledore’s Army, who of course ended up defeating Voldemort so that just goes to show I’m great at choosing my enemies. Then Sixth Year. Merlin. I smashed Potter in the face and left him to bleed to death on the train, and I also tried to _Crucio_ him, and I also poisoned his Weasel friend, and I also almost killed some other Gryffindor, and, what was the other thing? Oh yeah. I let a group of Death Eaters, including a feckin’ feral werewolf, into a school full of defenseless children.”

Draco takes a breath, as if he’s about to keep listing his crimes, but then his voice cracks and he lays his face down in his two hands and cries.

Alastor’s never really known what to do about tears. He’d babysat his six-year-old niece once, and a few hours in she’d slipped and scraped her knee. Within seconds, she’d been howling like it’d been torn clean off. Alastor remembered his mom had patted his head once when he’d scraped his knee as a boy, so he’d reached out to do the same to Josie, but his hand got tangled in her messy braids. He’d had to tear one braid out to free himself. Josie never did stop crying, and his sister never asked him to babysit again.

But Draco doesn’t have braids, so Alastor thinks it might be worth the risk to rest his hand on Draco’s head. “There now, laddie.” Alastor slides his fingers through the strands and strokes gently. “Cry it out, now.”

Draco moves as if to turn away, but Alastor is sure that would be wrong somehow, so he hooks Draco around the shoulder and maneuvers them into an entanglement that’s not so much an embrace as a python’s constriction. Alastor isn’t gentle and the picture isn’t pretty; he’s a gnarled old man with a bum leg caging in a beautiful youth with thick, rough, age-spotted hands against the back of Draco’s head and shoulders. Draco’s face is forced by the pressure to sink into Alastor’s collarbone. Draco’s arms hang limp for a moment before ducking beneath Alastor’s armpits to desperately claw at Alastor’s back, compressing the distance as if to fuse man and youth into one body.

Draco weeps with abandon.

For forever (or at least ten minutes), Alastor traces nonsense patterns into the back of Draco’s skull with churlish fingers while Draco clings and sobs. Draco is small inside Alastor’s flesh enclosure. Alastor is mysteriously compelled to compress Draco even smaller, as small as he can get, like Alastor is a metal vice twisting tighter and tighter around each time Draco’s hitches out a new sob. He’s not sure why but he can’t let Draco go and he doesn’t want to.

But eventually Draco’s tears subside, and Draco pulls away, and though Alastor wants to keep holding him for reasons he can’t comprehend he thinks that maybe he ought to give Draco his freedom. Draco wipes some loose snot on the sleeve of his new dress robes; Alastor clamps his wrist to halt that disgusting behavior and proffers a handkerchief instead. Draco uses it, then folds it and unfolds it a few times, before finally letting it hang limply in his hand.

“Are you going to cane me now, or when we get back to the cottage?” Draco asks dully.

Alastor is flummoxed. It’s the second time now that Draco’s suggested, without prompting, that Alastor cane him as a punishment, and Alastor doesn’t like it a bit. “Laddie—I know yeh feel bad about those things you did, but yeh’re serving a prison sentence for ‘em. I’m not going to cane you on top of that.”

“Not for that,” Draco rushes. “I meant for—for embarrassing you in public. Being rude to Longbottom and McGonagall, and, you know, being ungrateful.” Draco’s voice cracks again. “For breaking down, like this, in the middle of the Gala, and ruining the evening.”

“That Longbottom boy deserved it anyways. Don’t you worry none about Minnie. She’s a tough lass. And as far as I’m concerned the evenin’ was ruined far before we arrived.” That startles a small laugh out of Draco, and Alastor gives in to a sudden impulse to run his fingers along Draco’s cheek, ultimately resting them on Draco’s temple. A cold suspicion. “As for ‘breaking down.’ Did someone hit yeh when you cried, before?” A tentative nod. “Your father?” Draco’s breath hitches suspiciously again.

“Ah, lad.” Alastor places both hands on the sides of Draco’s face now, forcing Draco to look up and make eye contact. “It’s okay to cry when you need to. That’s not bad. And I’m definitely not goin’ to hit yeh for it.” And when Draco’s sobs begin afresh, Alastor enfolds the boy again, not knowing anything to do but try to crush Draco into nothingness. He doesn’t know how to fix this; all Alastor can offer is nonsense words and a bruising embrace. “I’ve got you. Yeh’re so good, Draco. Such a good boy. I’ve got yeh.”

“I’m n-not good! I’m a bad person! W-weren’t you even listening?”

Alastor shhhs and soothes. “Nonsense, lad. You’re a very good boy.” Alastor can’t explain why he knows, but he knows. “Now maybe yeh _were_ bad; I can’t comment none on that. I never knew yeh before. But I know the you that you are now. He’s compassionate—a bit naïve, a bit rude sometimes, but he’s got a real good heart.”

Judging by the tension in his shoulders, Draco isn’t convinced. “Even if I’m not, like, inherently bad, I still did enough unforgivable—like, literally, Unforgivable—things to send me straight to Hell. The ledger’s never going to balance out. Trying to give money to a homeless person once just doesn’t make up for attempted murder.”

Alastor is torn between agreeing with Draco in the abstract and wanting to say something, anything, to convince Draco he’s wrong. He absently rubs his hand up and down Draco’s back, trying to relax the stiffness. “Yeh may be right, but me ‘n you, we’ll keep workin’ on balancin’ that ledger. Together. I’ve got you, and I won’t let yeh get sent to Hell if I have anythin’ to say about it.”

There it is; Draco’s limbs slacken, and he sags, unable to support his own weight, into Alastor’s arms. Alastor huddles him close, soothing the back of his head into his shoulder and muttering sweet nothings while Draco cries. The tears are looser now, no less anguished but far less lonely. 

When it seems as if Draco is about to cry himself all the way he out, he abruptly lifts his head and exclaims: “I’m so sorry—your robes—!”

Alastor grimaces at the visible, shiny patch of tears and snot where Draco’s face had rested. “Don’t worry. It’s nothin’—an easy fix. It’s all good.”

_***_

And that’s the night Alastor Moody realizes he’s fallen for Draco Malfoy, and Alastor’s version of love is not very pretty.

***

It’s been so long since Alastor felt sexual attraction, and it’s a surprising, unexpected, and totally immoral reaction to Draco’s tears. They stir up the evil urges that Alastor has spent his entire life quelling, those intrusive thoughts that constantly hover around the peripheries of Alastor’s mind—the innocent desire to protect and care for someone, transmorphing into something darker and more dangerous. Uncontrolled, uncontrollable. A desire to own, to subjugate, to invade, to brand Draco’s body and soul with the words _mine, mine, mine._

Perhaps Alastor has a choice; perhaps there’s a fork in the road, a place he can turn around or choose a different path. But the morning after the Gala Alastor feels like he’s a helpless rider on a raging centaur, and he’s certain that even if he can’t do what he really wants to do to Draco ( _hit; brand; fuck_ ) he needs to own Draco in some way. He creeps out of his room and stops in the hallway in front of Draco’s door—then, for the first time, he engages his Eye so he can see what Draco’s up to inside.

Draco is standing in the middle of the office room in a baggy pair of Alastor’s flannel pyjama bottoms and a lightweight cotton nightshirt that hangs off one shoulder. His mouth is small and his lips are a pale rouge and well-formed and a tiny bit plump and his mouth and neck and shoulders all look so open and so biteable and he’s just eighteen (so young) and so slender and breakable. He’s doing yoga or something: stretching his fingers to the sky then bending over; then getting onto his hands and knees on a mat, arching and dipping his back. Alastor should stop, but he doesn’t, and he takes his Eye further: he peers beneath the pyjamas. Draco’s arse is not large but it is round, each half a solid handful gushing out like ripened fruit over the back of Draco’s thighs, both cheeks jiggling with Draco’s movements. On the downward bend Alastor catches a glimpse of a barely-visible pinprick in between—it looks too small to fit even a finger. 

Right there in the hallway Alastor dips a boorish hand into his trousers, giving pleasure to his coarse, oafish cock for the first time in years. It’s an ugly thing, purple with blood and monstrously thick with several calcified, protuberant veins circling the shaft. With age he’s sprouted several unsightly warts around the base, and his testicles are grizzled and wrinkly, speckled with graying pubic hairs and brownish liver spots. He imagines boring this grotesque cudgel into Draco’s impossibly small opening—imagines Draco _letting him_ , begging for it, seeing it in all its monstrosity and _wanting it_. Alastor’s cock splits Draco open, it barely fits, each vein rubs tender abrasions into Draco’s inner walls, Draco’s crying because it’s painful but he doesn’t ask Alastor to stop, he begs for more, he wants this gruesome penis to carve out its permanent place inside him. For this hateful cock to own him.

Alastor orgasms helplessly, still looking at Draco’s naked body. It’s some sort of crime to look at a naked person without them knowing, and he’s supposed to have been a law enforcement officer so he’s ashamed of his perversion and lack of self-control, but he can’t banish the urge to rip the door off the hinges and gather Draco up and yank off all his clothes and bite, rend, tear through Draco’s skin and his defenses. He wants to claim everything Draco has, everything he is, for himself.

***

Once the door is opened, it cannot be closed. Alastor looks at Draco’s naked body almost every time he sees him: on the way out the door to work, Draco’s arse bounces, pleasantly perky, tempting Alastor to smack it; when he returns, his nipples pebble and stand erect from the late winter chill, tempting Alastor to torment them. When they garden together on days off Alastor sneaks peeping glances at Draco on all fours, soaks up the way Draco’s thighs ripple when he tugs at a particularly tough weed. At breakfast, Draco leans his elbows on the hard wood table and Alastor pretends to need the lavatory just so he can leave the room and then come back and see the outline of Draco’s delicate spine stretching the pale skin of his back. Draco’s penis is small, adorable, unblemished—so different from Alastor’s; penis and body and soul and mind all equally discolored and disfigured.

Alastor learns Draco’s scars too. Jutting snakes of russet flesh crisscrossing his torso; a faded circular indentation at the nape of his neck; a tiny yellowish pockmark near his kidney; two or three faded stripes from a cane on Draco’s thighs. And of course, the Dark Mark. All yet more grievances to add to the list of reasons why Alastor will kill Lucius Malfoy if he ever sees the light of day again.

Alastor’s insistent urge to invade Draco’s privacy extends beyond his body, and he catalogues Draco’s belongings while Draco is at work. 

  1. A neatly-hung row of robes, slacks, and the jacket from the thrift store in the office armoire. (Draco’s café aprons are there too, but those aren’t really Draco’s, Alastor reasons.)
  2. A small, threadbare trunk with nothing but a few shirts, a Gringotts key (a new vault, for his coffee shop earnings), and some odds-and-ends—a flyer from the coffee shop, an inert Snitch, a faded Slytherin pennant.
  3. A single Chocolate Frog card tucked beneath the pillow. It has a picture Alastor’s ugly, scowling face, and on the back the inscription: _Once a legendary Auror in his own right, Alastor Moody claimed his place in history as a ranking member of the Order of the Phoenix, an underground movement that trained and organized witches and wizards committed to defeating Voldemort. He single-handedly defeated five Death Eaters at the Battle of Hogwarts (2 May, 1998). He has no known hobbies._



Alastor also figures out that, due the layout of the cottage, the shower stall is on the opposite side of his bedroom wall. In the evenings, after he’s told Alastor about his day, Draco always smiles shyly and announces he’s off to the shower. Alastor pretends this is an inconsequential event, teases Draco for thinking it needs to be declared. Alastor waits ‘til he can hear the bathroom door close from downstairs and then rushes to his room. From the edge of his own bed, Alastor removes his cock from its confines and leisurely strokes it to full hardness while observing white, soapy rivulets drip down Draco’s back, tracing arbitrary patterns between the lines of Draco’s muscles and down the backs of Draco’s legs. The soap slithers into the crack between his cheeks and Alastor can imagine it’s his orgasm, that Alastor is ejaculating on Draco like a cumrag after using Draco’s jaunty, toned thighs to frot himself to completion. 

Sometimes Draco masturbates too. Then Alastor shoves his eye right up against the wall to get the closest possible look at Draco’s fluttering eyelids, the little O of his lips, a splatter of cloudy liquid on the tile that gets washed away down the drain. Maybe Draco says a name, but Alastor can’t hear through walls.


	8. June 5, 1999 part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter describes, in some explicit detail, past abuse and non-con experiences. 
> 
> Also, this is Part 1 of a two-parter chapter. Part 2 comes out on Sunday!
> 
> Edit 8/11/20: Um, apparently quarantine has really fucked up my ability to read a calendar, as it's only Tuesday. I thought it was Wednesday!! So I guess you got this chapter early. I'll still hold off on posting Chapter 9 until Sunday, to get us back on schedule.

Draco turns nineteen on a blustery June day, and he’s asked—no, begged—to go back to the Italian restaurant. Draco dresses for the occasion in a fitted collared shirt (resized by Alastor, from Alastor’s closet) and prim slacks (from the thrift store). Alastor doesn’t bother to dress up special, but Draco doesn’t seem to mind.

This time, Draco doesn’t order the Cavatelli, but he still snags a bite of Alastor’s from his plate. He blabbers on for a while about work—Jenny and Jean have broken up, but Jenny got together with a barista from a rival shop, so that’s a whole big drama. Jean wrote Jenny a love-song and recorded it on a CD. “Alastor, get this. Muggles have these things called CDs. They’re little metal disks, but when you put them in a box, they make noise. It’s truly wild.” Then Draco starts ranting about the Muggle tourists who’ve come for summer hols, and how awfully inconsiderate they are, and Alastor is content to let Draco ramble on. His face is flushed with cheer, his ashy eyes gleaming with a certain excitement and freedom that Alastor isn’t ashamed to take credit for.

When Draco takes a rare break to suck in a few breaths, Alastor finally manages to jump in with, “Well, since it’s yer birthday, I thought I’d try and give you summat.”

Draco’s eyes widen. “A present?”

“Well. Sorta. Nothing special.” Alastor retrieves a lumpy package from his breast pocket and hands it over. Draco wastes no time tearing open the package right there at the table in the restaurant. It’s a new set of gardening gloves. They’re gray. “To match your eyes,” Alastor explains, since Draco’s face is so still that Alastor’s sure Draco is disappointed.

But then Draco takes one of the gloves between his two hands and strokes it with something like reverence. Then Draco looks at him with unabashed awe in his eyes. “Alastor. This is…”

“Hell, kid, ain’t nothin’,” Alastor grumbles, feeling uncomfortable with the adoration.

“It’s the best gift anyone ever got me,” Draco affirms grievously.

Alastor’s cheeks get a bit warm. “Nah, cain’t be true.”

“It is.” Draco slides the glove on and then splays his fingers wide in between them so they can both admire the fit. “It’s the most thoughtful gift I’ve gotten, at least. I suppose the house elves always made sure I got something adequately expensive and grandiose for the special occasions. But these are much more meaningful.”

Feeling peculiarly shy, Alastor rushes to change the subject. “Well, er, that reminds me. I was thinkin’. Well. Yeh’ve been livin’ wi’ me for six months, and you ain’t seen any of yer friends. I reckon I oughta make sure you know that it’s alright with me if yeh invite someone over to spend some time at the cottage.” Alastor is surprised, actually, that Draco has never asked for this: while he knew Draco wasn’t exactly the popular type at Hogwarts, he hasn’t asked to send even a single owl. It only occurred to Alastor recently that maybe Draco thinks he’s not allowed, so he wants to clear that up.

“Oh.” Draco sets his gloved hand back down on the table, still staring at it with a soft expression. “Thanks, Alastor. That’s real kind. Um, I can’t think of anyone I want to invite right now, but if I do, I’ll let you know.”

Alastor is curious—how can Draco have not a single friend he wants to talk to?—but he doesn’t ask. He wonders if all Draco’s friends are Death Eaters. (And are they even Draco’s friends anymore?) “And another thing.” Alastor sucks in his breath; he really, _really_ doesn’t want to make the next offer. “What I just said, it extends to yer mother too. She’s welcome any time now that she’s on supervised release. So long as yeh tell me in advance when you—”

“No.” The atmosphere noticeably cools. Draco tugs off the glove and stacks the two together, gesturing wordlessly at them before Alastor gets the hint and shrinks them down for Draco to put in his pocket. “I’m not inviting her over.”

Alastor fights down a wave of irritation at the finality in Draco’s tone. “She must be pretty lonely—her husband in prison, her son trapped in a cottage with a weirdo Auror—”

“I don’t really give a fuck what she thinks, Alastor.”

Alastor’s glad Draco doesn’t want to have her over because he certainly doesn’t want to meet her, but something doesn’t feel right about Draco’s response, and he can’t resist pushing just a little. “Yeh don’t care, not even a little?”

“Nope.” Draco haphazardly stabs his fork into his half-eaten Fettuccini noodles; he twirls too many around his fork and they slip off. Draco tries again.

“Well, maybe you oughta at least write her a letter,” Alastor ventures.

“I’m not going to talk to her.”

Alastor remembers his own mother—a solid, severe woman who could wield her sharp words as well as her frying pan. She’d died when Alastor was in his thirties. They’d never talked much, but she’d been a firm presence in Alastor’s life. Someone who’d encouraged him, in her strong, silent way, to become an Auror. Who’d had Alastor’s back through thick and thin—and who’d never pass up an opportunity to tell him if he was being thickheaded. Fifteen-odd years later and the grief hasn’t fully faded.

Draco must be angry that his mother had approved of their family joining the Death Eaters, Alastor decides. But if he shuts his mother out now, before long it might be too late. “Lad, I know it seems like you’ve got forever, but you don’t. You’ll regret it if—”

Draco slams his fork down on the table, where it clanks against the side of the plate. “Don’t you dare tell me what I will and won’t regret!”

But then, as Draco sucks in some air to continue sparring, his face goes white as a sheet. “What’s wrong,” Alastor barks.

“Alastor.” The temperamental edge from his voice is gone. Now Draco just sounds shaky. “That man, behind you, he just walked in. He’s a Death Eater.”

Alastor’s mindset shifts in an instant, and all the old habits of his Auror days come rushing back. Alastor may have been long retired from the force, but he knows better than to give the game away by ostentatiously swiveling his head. “Describe him to me,” he commands in a clear, sharp tone.

“Um…”

Impatient. “His name, boy, and his hair, his robes, where he’s sitting.”

Draco draws in a tremulous breath. “Okay. Um. His name’s Graeme Lowell. He’s got, um, sandyish brown hair. He’s wearing dark robes. They’re about five tables behind you.”

Alastor clicks his tongue. Draco would have made a poor Auror. “They? Who’s he with?”

“She’s blonde. Magenta robes. I—I don’t know her.”

Alastor pretends to flag down a waiter so he can take a look at the man Draco pointed out. He and the woman are conversing over the menu—the woman, her back to Draco and Alastor, is making broad gestures about something. The man is laughing. Nothing seems obviously out of place about this couple; nothing about them sets off Alastor’s irreproachable paranoia, and Alastor wonders if Draco mayn’t have mixed him up with someone else. “How sure are you?”

But Draco’s eyes have gone wide, frantic, the same look he used to get whenever Alastor raised his wand at him, and though he’s opening his mouth as if he’s about to answer, no sound is coming out. Draco is sure enough about Graeme Lowell that he’s about to have a panic attack right here in the restaurant. It strikes Alastor, too, that if that man really is Graeme Lowell and if Graeme Lowell really is a Death Eater, any advantage gained by Draco’s fortuitous identification will be lost if Lowell sees him.

“Draco, switch seats with me,” Alastor orders. Though Draco’s panic is rising he’s able to obey, putting his face out of Lowell’s line of sight and giving Alastor more time to plan. “We need to leave the restaurant,” Alastor explains, “and call in the Aurors, but we can’t walk by ‘em. He can’t know yeh saw him here or he’ll bolt.”

Draco is unleashing his anxiety on the napkin in his lap and doesn’t seem to hear Alastor at all. Alastor understands that Draco can’t do anything to help right now, and besides, he probably wouldn’t have had any ideas even if he wasn’t spiraling into madness. Alastor thinks about their options (bathrooms are at the front of the restaurant—no way to get there without passing Lowell) and realizes the only plausible one is to duck into the hallway in the back with the cleaning closet and Apparate from there.

“Draco. I know you don’t feel good, but I need yeh to listen to me fer a sec.” Alastor snags one of Draco’s hands and squeezes it firmly. “Draco. Tell me you heard me.”

“H-heard you.”

“We’re going to Apparate from the cleaning closet. You need to follow my lead. Draco, are you paying attention?”

Draco’s eyes are shimmery and crazed. “Draco, this is important,” Alastor hisses. “It’s very important that yeh don’t draw any attention to us.” But Draco doesn’t seem to be hearing him, and Alastor is getting more worried each passing second that Lowell is going to recognize the back of Draco’s head. “Shite,” Alastor mutters, drawing his wand. He thinks about announcing his intentions, but in this state of mind that might make Draco make noise. “ _Imperio_ ,” he whispers. Draco’s panic is replaced in an instant with a glassy, dopey expression. “Draco, smile at me sweetheart.”

Draco smiles, and it looks so different from his regular smile that Alastor is revolted. “I’m sorry, dear lad.” Overwhelming guilt, both that this is happening at all and that this is happening on Draco’s birthday, of all days. “Draco, once I stand up, follow me. Do not turn around. Do not say anything.” Alastor leaves a sizeable stack of Galleons on the table in hopes that the restaurant will forgive their premature departure. Alastor uses his Eye to look out the back of his head while they’re making their escape, but Lowell never looks at them.

They Side-Along back to the cottage. Alastor doesn’t cancel the _Imperio_ until they’ve safely crossed the wards and locked the front door, and as soon as he does, Draco’s panic emerges anew. “Laddie, I’m sorry,” and Alastor moves to embrace him, but Draco flails and catches Alastor in the head with a hand and Alastor backs away. “Laddie, I’m sorry for what I did, but yeh’re havin’ a panic attack and I need you to breathe.”

A few more wheezes, a whimper. “I-I can’t,” Draco cries. “C-can’t breathe!”

Alastor catches Draco this time, and maneuvers him so Draco’s back is to Alastor’s front. “Feel my breaths,” Alastor commands. “In, out. Breathe with them.” Draco tries to wriggle out of Alastor’s hold, but Alastor captures both Draco’s wrists in one rough hand and holds them still against Draco’s chest. “Be still. Breathe with me, laddie.” When Draco’s struggles subside, Alastor maneuvers them to the wall and slides down to seated on the floor, Draco boxed between his bended knees and back flush with Alastor’s chest. Alastor releases Draco’s wrists, and Draco’s hand seeks out like a cat to milk the first piece of fabric it can find to agitate. Alastor’s trousers. Alastor interlaces their fingers, his hand and Draco’s together, Alastor’s unmovable on top. He surrounds Draco on every side in a gentle captivity. “Lad, I’m so sorry, but I’ve got yeh now. You can feel my breath, see? You can feel my chest go up, down. In, out. Just follow my breath. There it is. Just like that. In, out. Breathe with me. Doin’ so good.”

It takes more than ten minutes for Draco’s breathing to resemble anything like its normal rhythm. Alastor keeps squeezing Draco’s hand, murmuring sweet nothings into Draco’s ear. You’re doing good. In, out, just like that. Such a good boy.

Finally, “Alastor.” Croaky and hoarse. Cognizant.

“Sweet lad,” Alastor exhales, a small laugh of relief. So wonderful to hear his voice. “Lad, I’m sorry.”

“You Imperiused me.” Draco sounds shellshocked.

“I know,” Alastor responds, with some anguish. “Merlin. If I’d had enough time to think of something else…”

“No, that’s not…” Draco pauses, searching for the words. “I’m not mad. I just can’t believe you had me under the Imperius Curse and all you did was bring me home safely. You released me from it as soon as we got through the door.” In, out, in, out. “I’m grateful.”

Alastor thinks Draco has some seriously low expectations for the people around him if he thinks ‘You only used an Unforgivable on me for a short period of time’ merits gratitude. “Lad, ain’t nothin’ to be grateful for. I would understand if you wanted to tell the Aurors—”

Draco’s hand tightens spastically around Alastor’s, his grip becoming almost painful in the matter of a split second. “No! No, please. We don’t need to tell them. I don’t want to be sent away!”

“I’ll find yeh another supervisor, yeh won’t have to go back to Azkaban for my cock-up—”

“No, I don’t want anyone else. Alastor, please don’t do this, please don’t leave me,” and Draco’s verging on another wave of panic.

“Ah, laddie, shh, it’s okay. I’ve still got you. I ain’t goin’ nowhere and neither are you.”

Draco relaxes again, sagging back against Alastor, his body that was stiff and resistant when seized with fright now pliable and doll-like.

“Sonny, what triggered this?” Alastor asks open-endedly.

Silence, then, “Alastor, I don’t know if . . .”

“If what?” But Draco doesn’t answer. “It had somethin’ to do with that man we saw, that Lowell.” Pause, wait for a response, nothing. Alastor tries a different tack. “If he was a Death Eater we have to bring him to justice. I can’t do that if I don’t know what he did.”

“I—I don’t even know where to start,” Draco admits. He hunches down to try to be smaller, but Alastor just bolts him up more securely. “It wasn’t _just_ Lowell. That made me panic, I mean.”

A nervous, gnawing feeling takes shape in Alastor’s gut. Alastor cowers from the feeling. He doesn’t want to learn what he thinks he’s about to learn. The only thing he can do is increase his pressure on Draco’s hand.

“I think you oughta start at the beginning, laddie.”

***

You could say it began the summer before my Sixth Year, when my father was in the gaol, and I was all alone, and I stupidly reasoned that if I accepted the Dark Mark and killed Dumbledore, Daddy would be so proud of me.

It probably began a lot earlier than that though, honestly. Maybe when I was four and I tried to show him some trick on my kid broom and a house elf told me, ‘He’s not to be being disturbed.’ Or when I was five, and I stubbed my toe, and I cried, but he ignored the toe and smacked my bum because Malfoys do not cry.

He used the Cruciatus for the first time when I was eleven. I was headed to Hogwarts that September, and I was dreadfully fond of myself at the time and longing to tell someone about it. A man came to our home, someone who was, at the time, quite important to one of my father’s business deals—Mr. Edgerton. He had a double-chin and uneven stubble and a bowler hat that he would tip at young ladies in the Floo terminal. Like a proper son, I was to serve them from a tea tray that the house elves prepared. They were immersed in business talk, appallingly boring stuff. My father didn’t even see me.

But Mr. Edgerton noticed me, and he thanked me for the tea, and he asked, Draco, lad, are you excited to go to Hogwarts? My spirits were lifted. I could finally tell someone what I’d been dying to say for weeks since I had gotten my letter.

Mr. Edgerton, sir, I’m ecstatic! I am going to be the most popular boy in school. And the smartest, to boot.

Mr. Edgerton laughed, deep and ebullient. Lucius, you’ve raised a cheeky lad! I was flushed with pride. But Father was not so pleased. He smiled, but in the tight way that I knew portended certain doom. Draco, my boy, run along to your room. I’ll be in to talk to you after my meeting.

When Father came later, after waiting sufficient time for my anxiety to mount, he told me to take off my trousers and bend over the bed. Father, please, I tried to beg. I couldn’t see his face, but I can imagine the ugly scowl he must have worn when I pleaded—I always merited Father’s worst scowl.

He caned me with his walking stick. He lectured between each stroke. You are a Malfoy. _Smack!_ You are a member of a Pureblood household of great dignity, extending back through generations of your ancestors. _Smack!_ They would be ashamed to see a Malfoy exalt his own endowments to a total stranger. _Smack!_ A Malfoy must comport himself in public with dignity and humility. _Smack!_

I couldn’t manage dignity, but humility was easy—my tears started to fall freely after the fourth stroke and drew ugly tracks down my cheeks. Please stop, Father! I’m sorry!

 _Smack!_ If you do not cease your whinging, I will give you something worthy to whinge about. _Smack!_ Malfoys do not cry. _Smack!_ Malfoys do not whine and beg to get out of their just deserts. _Smack!_ Malfoys do not weep like hysterical women. _Smack!_ You will learn to behave as the Pureblood heir of the Malfoy line is expected to behave, or you will face. _Smack!_ The. _Smack!_ Consequences! _Smack!_ Malfoys! _Smack!_ Do! _Smack!_ Not! _Smack!_ Cry! _Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack!_

I know that what I wanted more than anything after Father finished was to be capable of stoppering the never-ending gush of tears aroused by twenty livid strikes and my father’s profound disappointment. But I couldn’t stop. My father yanked me from the bed, my trousers still around my ankles. Go stand in the middle of the room. I tried to obey but I tripped over the dangling end of a pantleg, landing on my chin, bruising it. Stand up, he barked. He hadn’t noticed the bruise, or maybe he just didn’t care.

My father cut an imposing figure that day. Black robes hemmed to his ankles fastened with a stately set of silver buttons and a lace cravat. His hands rested one on top of the other on the polished snakehead of the walking stick he’d used to cane me. I must teach you this lesson for your own good, he explained to me. He grasped the butt of the cane in one hand and drew the wand out with the other. The snakehead now in his right hand. Seven generations of Malfoys have taught their sons this same lesson, Draco.

That’s when I felt, for the first time, the excruciating, inescapable embrace of the Cruciatus. I suppose you know what it’s like, being an Auror and all. I can’t accurately describe how it feels—it radiates liquid fire and ice and blades and spikes and every other painful thing you can think of down every nerve and capillary, all at once. I collapsed within seconds. After maybe a half minute, my father cancelled the curse and approached me. I was on my hands and knees. His boots were in front of my face. He tilted my head up with his wand. Are you going to stop crying now?

I wanted to. I would have given anything not to be crying anymore. But I couldn’t really control it, and the spell was so painful, and my father’s eyes looked so cold and hard and hateful. Fresh tears seeped out without my consent. Please, father, I’m sorry, I’m trying not to, please—

Another Cruciatus for another half minute. I shrieked and writhed and tried to escape, but there was nowhere I could go but my own head where all the pain piled up. I couldn’t stop crying. He cursed me two more times that night, for a total of four rounds. By that point, my tears dried up from dehydration and I had a pounding headache. On my hands and knees, my arms gave out, and the side of my face smacked into the floor, and when I tried to lift back up my biceps quivered ineffectually. I was indecent and undignified.

Have you learned your lesson? I couldn’t speak, and my father nudged my cheek with his foot, perhaps curious if I was alive. Apparently satisfied at what he saw, he delivered a vicious kick to my face. The force propelled me nearly a meter across the floor and knocked out my final baby tooth, which launched through the air in a bloody arc and landed near my bed. I didn’t cry. I’d passed the test. Since I was still alive, Father left me there and sent a house elf to clean me up.

From then on I mostly learned to accept the cane without tears, though I did suffer the lash of the Cruciatus three more times during my childhood—once because of my whinging about Buckbeak, and two other times for making impolitic remarks at public functions. By the final time, I didn’t even whimper, not even after four or five bouts. I wanted him to tell me he was proud of my endurance, but he didn’t, probably because I had earned those punishments for crying in the first place.

That final time with Lucius’s Cruciatus was the summer after my Fourth Year, after Voldemort returned, by the way. Father was gone a lot, and I didn’t know why, and there was no way I could ask. I had my guesses though and Potter’s crusade to inform the world about the Voldemort’s return bolstered my suspicions. My father’s arrest in the Department of Mysteries in Fifth Year confirmed that he was a Death Eater and that the Malfoys were supporters of Voldemort. I figured I was a Malfoy so I was too.

The Dark Lord approached me about becoming a Death Eater the night after my father went to Azkaban. I naively thought it was because he saw potential in me, and I knew that it might be my only chance to prove to Father once and for all that I wasn’t weak, that I wasn’t a simpering, spoiled Malfoy brat who broke down in tears from a stiff wind. You seek revenge on those who stole your father away, Voldemort told me. His chin rested on skeletal sallow-green fingers, one leg crossed almost delicately over the other. His voice was gentle. I didn’t know if I truly wanted revenge, so I told the Dark Lord instead, I seek to be strong. He smirked. I guess my answer was good enough.

I was alone for much of Sixth Year, planning, plotting. My mother wouldn’t help me; she in fact actively tried to thwart me. So did Severus Snape. Both of them wanted me to be free from Him, but I tuned them out. I was ready to show my father how capable I was, that I had learned something valuable from his discipline. Draco, you’re a fool. The Dark Lord expects you to fail. No, he _wants_ you to fail so he can use your death to punish Lucius. Hah. As if Lucius would care if I was dead.

I am given to believe that the only reason I’m not dead now is because my scheme with the Vanishing Cabinet wasn’t a complete cock-up. I did manage to put a bunch of schoolchildren in harm’s way by giving Fenrir Greyback the run of the school, and though it wasn’t by my hand because I balked in the face of the kill, Dumbledore had still perished. From the Astronomy Tower Snape drew me into his arms and took me to the Manor, our headquarters at the time. I’m sorry, Draco, he whispered, but he made me go inside with him. He gave the Dark Lord a thorough report of the evening, including all the details leading up to Dumbledore’s death. Voldemort looked so pleased I thought I might get off okay.

Severus, you have exceeded my expectations, he said. Severus knelt and kissed the hem of Voldemort’s robes. I had never seen them together before; Snape is always bad-tempered, big on his own authority. A man you can’t cross. His obeisance was revolting and wrong. He looked up at Voldemort with a worshipful, almost-lustful gaze.

Draco. The Dark Lord turned his attention to me. Nothing was left of the pleased expression he’d shown to Severus. You have failed your mission. Failed me.

Imitating Snape, I bent down on my hands and knees to pepper kisses to the trim of his robes. My Lord, forgive me, I stuttered. The tell-tale burn of crying alighted behind my eyes for I knew death was near. Please forgive me, My Lord, I repeated. I failed You. I should have tried harder to accomplish the task You set for me.

You are a failure indeed. He kicked me in the face, much like my father had done six years before, and I landed in a heap on my side. The Malfoy family is worthless, he spat out, not hiding his disgust.

He then Crucio-ed me. I had mastered silent submission to my father’s curse, but since you’ve probably never felt it, a Cruciatus from Voldemort is unimaginably worse than one from Lucius Malfoy. I wept far before the thirty-second mark.

What a pity—Lucius kept trying to convince me you were strong. I should have known better than to believe his lies.

It went on for what felt like forever, but was likely only three or four minutes. I twitched on the ground when it was over. Get up, he ordered, and I tried but I couldn’t move. Voldemort spat on my decumbent body. His spit wasn’t human; it burned through my clothes and left a small pockmark on my lower back. Severus, pick him up and take him to the ballroom.

I don’t know exactly how many Death Eaters were in the ballroom waiting—maybe twenty-five, maybe thirty—but they’d all removed their masks and each of their faces is branded in my memory. I knew many of them. I’d already met Rowle, Yaxley, and Greyback during my feeble attempts to carry out my mission. I knew Bella and her husband, Rodolphus Lestrange, as family. But many men I didn’t recognize—men whose names I still don’t know. My father was there. (Not my mother; she wasn’t Marked). I tried to make eye contact from Severus’s arms. Lucius’s face was pale, pinched, and he wouldn’t look at me. I wanted his comfort, though I am not sure why I thought he would offer it. He never had before.

My loyal servants. Voldemort’s voice carried through the room. Tonight we are here to celebrate a great victory. Albus Dumbledore is conquered at last, by Severus’s own hand.

A great cheer. (It’s disconcerting to know how joyful they were that someone else had died.)

But we also must teach young Draco a lesson for his failure. Voldemort raised his wand, muttered an incantation, and conjured—he conjured—oh, Merlin…

_Draco, shh. It’s alright. Shh._

_I’m sorry, Alastor. It’s hard—it’s hard to say._

_I’ve got yeh. Don’t yeh worry none._

He conjured the pillory. That’s one of those wooden medieval devices that you stick your head and your hands in and it traps you there. This pillory looked no different than an ordinary pillory. Oh, you know what a pillory is. I’ll stop describing it then.

Severus carried me to it. Draco, you must endure, he muttered to me. They were the only words of consolation I received that night. Severus bent me over the frame and locked me in—the neck and wrist holes were uncomfortably tight. The pillory was positioned at a height to jackknife me at ninety degrees, my back as flat as a table.

Our revel will be young Draco’s punishment, the Dark Lord said. A muttered spell, and I was naked in the stocks. I remember that the ballroom felt cold. Draco will learn devotion, and I expect each and every one of you—Bella and Alecto, you’re no exceptions—to help me put Draco in his proper place.

Severus got my virginity as his conquering prize. He took a lust potion in secret to get it up because he’d predicted this would happen and he was my godfather and he wasn’t attracted to men and he didn’t want to rape me but the alternative was losing his position as spy and the war was more important. Let me clarify—I didn’t know all that at the time, but found out after the Battle of Hogwarts in a posthumous letter. It was nearly unbearable that night to witness how excited he was to fuck me. I’m grateful now because I see that he did what he could to make it manageable for me—he stretched me with oil and fingers, though he couldn’t get away with it for too long before the others started yelling things like, hurry it up, fuck the slut already, stop with the foreplay!

It hurt in a different way from the Cruciatus Curse. The Cruciatus is all-encompassing, indiscriminately sending pain to your entire body at once. You can’t really think or even perceive a sensation other than agony while being Crucio-ed. But I recall with piercing clarity the hot hardness of Severus’s dick and how cold the room was and his fingertips pressing desperate indentations into my hips and his lustful moans, oh God, sweet Merlin, Draco you’re beautiful, things like that. I saw Dolohov and Pettigrew and men I didn’t know with half-lidded eyes stroking their own cocks beneath their robes. Bella was on her knees in front of her husband and his hand was fisted in her hair, but he was looking at me.

Severus’s come was warm and slimy.

Greyback got to go next, which elicited some grumbles since he apparently has the biggest cock of all the Death Eaters and it was a waste to stretch me out so early, but he deserved a reward too. He didn’t do any foreplay, and he didn’t call me beautiful. He said I looked like a bitch in heat, and sank his nasty teeth into the back of my neck while he broke my insides. Just a nasty, sloppy bitch in rut, he growled into my ear. I tried to put dittany on the bite later but it’s a werewolf’s so it’s never going away. 

I zoned out for the third, Rabastan—his dick was small and didn’t feel like much after Greyback, so I tried to pretend I wasn’t there. The fourth, Rodolphus, was worse because he was the sibling who’d apparently won the genetic cock lottery, and he’d already orgasmed in his wife’s mouth so it took him ages. So long, in fact, that people who hadn’t gone yet were getting antsy and Voldemort granted them permission to use my mouth too. Be warned, Draco, that if you bite any of my loyal men, I will remove each of your teeth, one by one.

It gets a bit hazy after Rodolphus. I know Yaxley and Mulciber were closer to the beginning; Avery and Pettigrew were more towards the end. By the time it was Pettigrew’s turn my hole was so stretched that I couldn’t even feel his pencil dick. Though for the most part I was soft, a couple of them wanted me to enjoy the violation. Augustus Rookwood teased my prostate until I got hard, then jacked me off while he fucked me. I came and the entire room laughed at me. They shouted out taunts like, looks like Draco is enjoying this after all! Such a whore. Is this really a punishment for him?

I suppose you need me to talk about Lowell. He was one of the men I didn’t know at the beginning. He got my mouth early and my arse late. His cock sticks out in my memory not because it was bigger or smaller than average but because it had a stark brown mole distending from the side—the mole was disgusting, at least three centimeters in diameter, and it had a couple wispy little hairs. He rubbed it against my cheeks and my nose and made me suck on it; I don’t suppose he got people to touch it willingly that often. It tasted salty. You’ll always remember Graeme Lowell’s mole, was what he said when he was in my mouth, and it rhymed and it got stuck in my head so he was right. (That’s how I learned his name, by the way.) When he finally got his turn with my arse, I felt the mole chafing my insides. I didn’t enjoy that, but Lowell was like Rookwood and he wanted to find my prostate and even though it was agonizing and sensitive, I eventually got hard and I came around Graeme Lowell’s mole. Draco the whore loves Graeme Lowell’s mole, he crooned as he slipped out of me. Dozens of Death Eaters tittered around me and it became a chant. Draco the whore loves Graeme Lowell’s mole! Draco the whore loves Graeme Lowell’s mole!

It lasted until morning and no one was permitted to sleep or leave the room. There were so many of them that any of them could fuck one of my holes, rest, get hard again, fuck the other hole, rest again, get hard again, and repeat the whole process two or three times over. (This is why I can’t give you an accurate count of how many people were there.) Whenever I passed out someone would Ennervate me, and maybe halfway through Severus dumped some potion down my throat that made the pain a little more tolerable. Though Severus, who I suppose was still high on his lust concoction, immediately tried his best to undo the potion’s beneficial effects by buggering me again (some griping in the room that Severus got seconds before they got firsts; Voldemort soothing the crowd, talking about Severus’s heroism and bravery and doesn’t he, Dumbledore’s Vanquisher, deserve this prize more than any other?)

By morning, everyone had fucked me except for one. I think you can see where this is going, Alastor. My father stayed behind the pillory all night so that I never saw his face. I assumed naively that he’d find a way out of the Dark Lord’s admonition that ‘each and every’ Death Eater would participate in my ravishment. Somehow or another I had latched onto the thought that even Voldemort wasn’t depraved enough to make a father rape his only son. 

Lucius, it’s your turn. The sickly-sweet sibilant voice of the Dark Lord.

My Lord. You are offering me a great gift. I felt Lucius approach my backside. A chilled hand stroked my bum, my thigh, my hip.

How does he feel, Lucius? the Dark Lord wanted to know.

He is soft. Smooth. Utterly fuckable.

To this day I can’t believe those words came out of my father’s mouth. He’s not as smart as Severus so I don’t think he predicted that that night would end in my rape, and he’s not a good enough brewer to have made a lust potion beforehand anyways, so that doesn’t explain it. A moment later I heard him unzip, and he rubbed a throbbing, desperately erect dick against my hip. The penis that made me dribbled precum that coagulated on the flat planes of my back and dripped down my thighs. It’s hard to fake lust that sincerely vehement; I thought he must have been thinking about my mother.

He leaned over my back, his long hair tickling my naked skin, and he pressed his mouth to Greyback’s oozing bite. Exquisite, he breathed. Eight questing fingers darted up and down my sides. One finger dipped inside me—I moaned, unbearably sore. Another mouth press, somewhere in the middle of my spine. He grazed my prostate. Found it, he murmured. I stood there locked in the pillory powerless to do anything but submit as my father purposefully fingered me to the edge of orgasm.

Then his finger was gone and something blunter bumped up against my outer rim, eager to take the finger’s place. The room observed us in rapt attention. We must have made a pretty picture. Voldemort can’t resist a taunt: Fuck him like you mean it, Lucius.

Lucius fucks me like he means it. He sighs and moans and gasps out little noises and the people in the room keep catcalling out things like, fuck the whore, Lucius! Destroy that slutty bitch! Unnnh, ahhh, Draco, he’s gasping, the obscenities are making his dick even harder and his thrusts are becoming more unpredictable. He angles his cock to hit my prostate so that I’ll love it too, and then he jerks me off so that I orgasm around his penis. While I spurt watery come onto the floor, my muscles tighten around him and draw him to his release. Draco, he cries. Draco. Draco. Draco.

It’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt.

I’m helpless to my tears. I’d held them back all night but now they’re streaming down my face, pooling on the floor beneath me not far from the puddles of my pleasure, heaving, gasping sobs that wrack through my body and make me wish I were dead. When Lucius is done he walks around the pillory where I can see him. Father, help me, I beg. It hurts. Please, Father, it hurts. Please make it stop.

He slaps me, a substantial blow right to my temple. The pillory won’t let me fall, but the force of the strike bangs my head against the wood. Stop sniveling, he orders. He slaps me again. You are a Malfoy. A third. A Malfoy must comport himself in public with dignity and humility. Slap. Malfoys do not weep like hysterical women. Slap. Malfoys do not cry. Slap. Are you listening to me, Draco?! Malfoys do not cry! Stop crying! Stop! I command you!

I can’t stop.

 _SLAP!_ And I think that’s when I passed out for good, because that’s all I remember.


	9. June 5, 1999 part 2

There’s a strange sensation on Alastor’s face. It’s warm, and his throat hurts, and his nose feels puffy and wet.

“Alastor?”

There’s a throbbing pulse behind his eyeballs and his vision is blurry. Alastor’s sure of nothing but that he needs to know that Draco’s there. He flexes his fingers; relieved to feel Draco’s hand underneath.

“Alastor, please say something.”

He can’t. If he opens his mouth something awful is going to come out, something terrifying and bloodthirsty and avaricious that he won’t be able to put back in.

Draco twists around in Alastor’s arms so that he’s on his knees and they’re face-to-face. “Oh, Alastor.” A broken whisper. “Alastor, shh…” Lifts up two gentle hands to Alastor’s face, wipes tears from Alastor’s cheeks with a delicate swipe. “Alastor, it’s okay. It was a long time ago. I’m okay. Please don’t cry…”

That’s what the unfamiliar feeling is. Crying. Alastor lets the strength of his emotions overpower him, deep, silent sorrow, tears flowing freely and noiselessly. Draco is muttering sweet nonsense into Alastor’s ear. “Draco,” he gasps, clamping his nails into Draco’s upper arms in a desperate bid to remind himself that Draco is fine, Draco is here, everything is okay. His hands dance across every part of Draco he can reach, squeezing him more securely in Alastor’s embrace—the frenzied groping leaving Draco unbalanced, pitched face-first into Alastor’s chest with an ‘oomph!’ “I’ve got you,” Alastor sobs. “Yeh’re okay, sweetheart, yeh’re so good, I’ve got you.” Needs to stroke his hair. Needs to touch his face. “I’ve got you.”

Draco lifts his head back up and he’s grinning amused affection. “I’ve got _you_ , old man,” he counters, a shaky laugh.

That startles a chuckle out of Alastor. “Sassy brat.” 

Draco’s laughter subsides; his expression becomes solemn, earnest. “Alastor.” Draco’s hand returns to his cheek; his palm scorches Alastor’s jawline. “I’ve got you. And you’ve got me. We’ve got each other.”

Draco’s eyes blaze and time slows down and Alastor somehow knows what’s coming and his thoughts are all chaos and he can’t figure out how to organize them into a pattern that makes sense and suddenly, for the first time, Draco’s lips are on his, it’s warm, he’s sweet, they’re pressed together so close and Draco’s lips slant open so Alastor’s tongue delves in to explore. A muffled moan, no telling whose. The kiss becomes impetuous and unmoored—teeth clacking slapdash open mouths spit mixing saturating swallowing each other’s breaths and someone gasps, two or three gasps, converging closer, no more distance, advancing with poking prodding tongue invading, driving forward with a snarl, Draco yields, he’s Alastor’s for the taking, Alastor knows it’s wrong but he can’t stop, this is how to quell the beast, Draco belongs to him and he needs to touch, taste, feel, _claim_ …

Clarity seeps in through the cracks, reminding Alastor why he and Draco are sitting on the ground and what Draco just told him and who they saw at the restaurant. Alastor is ashamed of his aggression, so close on the heels of learning that Draco was a survivor of this very same unrestrained sadistic dominance. He pulls back panting, loosening the deathly grip of his fingers and expecting Draco to take advantage of his chance to escape.

“Please don’t stop, Alastor,” Draco begs.

“Yeh don’know what’cher sayin’—”

“I know what I’m saying!” An irritated huff. “I’m not a child.”

“You are. You _were_.”

Alastor’s mouth is captured this time, Draco puncturing the seal of Alastor’s lips for a ferocious moment before breaking apart again. “Alastor, I’m not too young or too broken to know what I want. I want you, and I know you want me back.”

Alastor doesn’t have time to reflect on how Draco might know that with such confidence before Draco continues.

“No one even cared what happened to me, you know; no one ever cried over it or anything like that. Mother found out, of course, from Bella, but she was more angry that Father liked it—she saw me as some sort of competition, I guess.” Draco’s voice is bitter, and Alastor understands now why Draco isn’t interested in having her over to visit. “I’ve never mattered to anyone before…no one except you. No one’s ever told me that I’m good, or comforted me, or cared that I got hurt, but you healed that hobo bruise and you let me cry and you always call me a good boy even though you know all the rotten things I’ve done. All I want, Alastor, is to keep being good for you.” A flash of insecurity. “If you’ll let me.”

“Ah, lad.” Alastor runs a harried hand through his own snarled, brittle hair. “It’s not a question of lettin’ yeh or not. Yeh don’need to kiss me to be good. Fer me to call you good. You _are_ good, and you do matter, and you deserve to be happy and safe.”

Alastor pauses, hoping he can vocalize the next bit correctly; he’s fifty-one years old and he’s been an adult for a long time so he should be mature enough to articulate it. “I think yeh’re conflating affection with romance, laddie. Yeh don’ really want to be… _sexually_ …involved with me. Yeh’re young, and lonely, and yeh’ve gone through a lot and yeh’re tryin’ to secure yer place. But yeh don’need to. I’ve got you no matter what, no conditions.”

Draco laughs like Alastor’s said something particularly humorous. “But Alastor, don’t you get it? It’s because of everything you just said that I want you so bad. I want… Alastor, listen, I’ll never be able to forget the things that happened to me that night. Those images haunt my dreams. But I want new images, don’t you see? To drive the old ones away.”

Draco is earnest and honest, and it scares Alastor a little. “Yeh really think yeh’ll get pretty new images with me?” Alastor gruffs. “I’m an old man, yeh said so yerself. And not a nice one.”

Draco pecks his mouth, then his chin, then the loose, drooping pleats of skin on his neck. “You don’t need to be nice to me,” Draco murmurs against the flabby folds, and then his mouthing becomes more lascivious, a taut pink tongue darting out to lave the wrinkles and trace indiscriminate patterns across Alastor’s throat. Scraping Alastor’s three-days-old stubble. “And the images don’t need to be pretty. I just need…” Draco trails off when he reaches Alastor’s shirt collar. “I just need them to be different.”

“Merlin, Draco,” Alastor sighs. “If yeh knew the things I thought about yeh. The things I’ve done thinkin’ about yeh. Yeh’d head for the hills. Yeh might prefer Azkaban.”

“Tell me.”

But Alastor is weak and he doesn’t want to confess the depths of his sadistic obsession (the spying; the stretching; the showers; images of skewering Draco on his disgusting cock). Now that he sees his fantasies for Draco are disturbingly similar to the torture he’s endured, they fill Alastor with shame. When Alastor doesn’t say anything more, Draco pops the button of Alastor’s collar, and the next three down the line. Draco suckles the triangle of newly-exposed skin reverently, unbothered by the thick layer of coarse gray chest hair. “I want to touch more of you,” Draco whines. Alastor’s outer layers impede him from undoing any more of the buttons.

A choice needs to be made, and Alastor is weak so he grunts, “B-bedroom,” and when he and Draco tumble onto the bed in a frenzy, mauling each other’s mouths, Alastor’s weight holding Draco down, his knee between Draco’s legs, _pressing_ , he knows there’s no going back.

“P-please, clothes,” Draco manages to gasp out between erratic twists and bucks. Alastor is overcome with the need to see the contrast between them—Draco’s slight, slender frame eclipsed by Alastor’s girth, Draco’s nearly-translucent skin born down upon by lank and grimy hair and teeth and tongue. Alastor leans back on his knees for a moment to fumble with his outerwear; he can’t get a grip on the belt buckles of his trench coat, his fingertips keep sliding over, slippery with sweat.

“Let me help?” Alastor looks up and Draco has already shed his shirt and trousers and he’s just in a pair of dark gray boxer-briefs, and he kneels level with Alastor, thin and nimble fingers hovering questioningly over the fastenings. Alastor lets Draco take off his outer trench coat and throw it on the floor, then lets him unzip his leather jacket underneath and chuck it just the same, then lets him adroitly unbutton the collared shirt Draco had already started to unfasten a few minutes earlier. Draco pulls Alastor’s arms through the sleeves, removing it, the tips of his fingers grazing Alastor’s bare, furred chest. “Lie back,” says Draco hoarsely once Alastor is only in trousers. Alastor lets himself recline, his head elevated some forty-five degrees by the pillows by the headboard. His feet are flat and knees are up and Draco is there in between them, tugging off one yellowed sock and unzipping trousers and pulling down briefs over leg and wooden stump.

Alastor’s cock bounces free. It’s pulsing and behemoth, as ugly and feculent as ever. Wrathful, now, too, wanting to exact retribution on Draco’s tormentors by reshaping Draco’s insides and expelling the specters of violation and torture. No, not expelling; replacing. And Alastor knows he should feel self-conscious to display such a loathsome penis to Draco, whose own (Alastor knows, even though the boxer-briefs have not yet come off) is clean and unsullied and notably lacking in warts and wrinkles and age spots. But Draco’s delight is plain on his face. A tiny hand encloses around the head; Draco’s thumb and fingers can’t reach all the way around it. A curious and tentative caress, up and down, then some more sure strokes. Draco learns the ossified veins. On the upstroke, his thumb skims guilelessly across the tip. Precum beads. Draco draws it up to his mouth, and Alastor’s breath catches because Draco licks his finger reverently and murmurs, “Tastes good;” total nonsense.

Then the unimaginable begins and Draco lowers his mouth onto Alastor. He swirls his tongue around the glans, agitates the foreskin, sneaks beneath the folds. Alastor didn’t prepare for his dick to be touched today; it’s unwashed and there’s built-up smegma inside so it must taste vile but he doesn’t apologize because Draco cleans him with fervor and zeal, apparently not put-off. Draco puts the entire head in his mouth and hums a bit, the vibration is intense, intoxicating, and Draco bobs there for a moment before pulling off to work his lips down the length. Pausing at points to suckle a tough vein, to pull at roughened skin with puerile white teeth before soothing in apology. Draco reaches Alastor’s bollocks, lifting the heavy cock to nurse on the wrinkled sack, unaffected and undisturbed by either its appearance or the rank stench of days-old sweat. The image is overwhelming—Alastor’s filthy cock spanning from Draco’s chin to his forehead; a curly gray pubic hair, free from the root, stuck between two of Draco’s teeth; Draco’s eyes, half-obscured by dick, darting eager and gratified glances up at Alastor between licks and sucks to his sack. Alastor can’t suppress a labored groan and he thrusts his hips towards the ceiling uncontrolledly, slapping Draco’s face with his balls.

“What’s wrong? Don’t you like it?” Draco asks innocently, inclining his chin to make eye contact and tilting his head inquisitively. Alastor sees the twinkle in his eye. The sass!

“Cheeky brat,” Alastor breathes, and without considering if he should, he grips Draco’s hair like a handle and forces him back down. For the next few minutes, Alastor frots recklessly against Draco’s cheeks and eyes and nose, jabbing between his lips, pummeling his tongue, never surrendering his shackle on Draco’s hair. Draco is no longer giving a blowjob; Alastor is taking a blowjob. Draco doesn’t protest.

When Alastor starts feeling close, he drags Draco back up the length of his body by the hair to plunder his mouth again. Draco yields to Alastor’s insistent tongue. He tastes like Alastor. When they finally break apart for air, Draco is gasping for breath and beaming. “A-Alastor,” he moans, “I love your cock.”

Alastor nearly laughs out loud it’s such an absurd thing to say about his beastly penis. “Yeh hit yer head on summat, lad?”

Draco laughs and shakes his head. Hand drifting back down Alastor’s body to wrap around the shaft again. “I like it,” Draco explains, “because it’s unique. It’s so different from any cock I’ve ever seen. Bigger; dirtier; bumpier. I can’t stop wanting to touch it. I want to memorize it.”

There’s no artifice in Draco’s tone. No meager attempts to compliment; no false statements or endeavors to convince Alastor it’s handsome. It’s just acceptance of who and what Alastor is, and Alastor’s mind has been made up since forever that Draco is going to be his, but now he knows it’s impossible to reverse course.

He bats Draco’s hand away, capturing the slender wrist in a strong grip and drawing it up behind Draco’s back. “If yeh want more, I need to catch me breath.” Then Alastor bodily flips their positions; Draco now lying flat and Alastor boxing him in with his knees at Draco’s hips. Alastor finds both Draco’s hands and imperiously shoves them under the small of Draco’s back. “Those stay there,” Alastor commands. Draco gulps. Moans, “Okay,” and bites his bottom lip.

Alastor has seen Draco naked, of course, far more times than he should have. But this time Draco is his to touch and grope and feel. He smooths his hands down Draco’s sides; plucking at taut nipples, then pinching, more painfully, Draco defenseless. Abandoning one nipple to stroke that hand down Draco’s hips, forcing it between the body and the bed and digging four rude fingertips into the swell of Draco’s arse through fabric.

The boxer-briefs are in the way, so Alastor hooks the waistband and pulls them off, springing Draco’s erect cock loose. Alastor shifts his focus here: as he’s observed, it’s small, but proportionate, a neat curly thatch of blonde pubes around the base. Alastor dispenses a few methodical strokes to bring it to full hardness and then takes it in his mouth with skill that was once practiced but is now unpolished and tempestuous. But sucking cock is like riding a broom and Draco seems to be enjoying it, if his needy whimpers are to be believed. Alastor spends an agreeable fifteen minutes repeatedly drawing Draco to the edge then pulling away, darkly chuckling when Draco groans in slight pain and keens, “Please!” every time Alastor clamps an iron hand around the base to prevent his release.

“Not yet,” he murmurs; a teasing kiss to the head. “Don’t move; I’ll be right back.” Alastor stumbles to the closet and pulls out an old box that he packed up some years before, digging through it to find the prize. Thank Merlin it’s still there. Alastor returns to Draco with the bottle in hand. Draco is staring back at him, looking debauched and hungry and lewd with trapped wrists and widespread legs and a gaping mouth. 

The bed dips when Alastor kneels back down between Draco’s legs. He stuffs a pillow underneath Draco’s bottom and then seizes him behind each knee to push with implacable pressure until Draco is bent completely in half. “Hold these,” he grunts, and Draco’s arms emerge from beneath himself to restrain his own legs. “Good boy,” Alastor praises. He admires Draco’s bashful blush for a brief moment before he unstoppers the bottle.

Alastor conspicuously drips oil on his index, middle, and ring fingers. He traces the rim of Draco’s hole gently, kneading it and pressing but not entering, yet. “I’ll do my best to prepare yeh, laddie, but a cock like mine is always gonna hurt a bit, mind. Is this what yeh want?”

“Daddy, please, I want it!”

The unexpected epithet shocks Alastor into plunging forward; the sudden penetration of one finger jolting a squeal out of Draco. “Yeh want yer Daddy’s fingers?” Accepting the name and the role and all the responsibility. Thrusting, advancing, impaling. A second finger invades without asking.

“D-daddy,” Draco cries when Alastor strikes his prostate.

“Yeh want yer Daddy’s cock?” A third finger, now, together the three the width of a smaller man’s dick. Fingers propelling in the rhythm of intercourse, Draco’s cock helplessly leaking preejaculate. Draco’s hands are occupied with his legs but he’s desperate so he lets one leg go to masturbate his prick; but Alastor swats Draco’s hand and orders him back into position. “Yeh’ll come when I want yeh to.” Draco whines plaintively; Alastor ignores.

When he’s judged Draco ready, he wipes some excess fluid from his fingers on the inside of Draco’s thighs and scoots up Draco’s body. He flattens Draco with his weight; both hands tangle up in Draco’s hair, perversely pleased to be smearing the rest of the lube-and-Draco mess into the wispy blonde mop that Alastor watched Draco wash just before they left for the restaurant. Alastor’s cock bumps up against Draco’s hole. “Yeh really want this?” Alastor asks one final time.

“Please, Daddy!”

Alastor rams. He lodges half his cock in the first brutish thrust. Draco wails, and there are tears taking shape in the corners of his eyes. “Daddy, it hurts,” Draco cries.

“Shh, sweet boy,” Alastor says, holding still by sheer force of will. He coaxes Draco’s mouth into an open-mouthed kiss. “I’ve got yeh. Cry it out now, there laddie,” he grunts into his lips.

Draco grimaces and sniffles; Alastor’s heft is holding Draco’s legs open now, so Draco lets them go and wraps his two trembling arms around Alastor’s neck, deepening the kiss. His legs twine around Alastor’s bulk, somewhere around Alastor’s floating ribs, heels digging into corrugated fat. Alastor fucks Draco’s mouth with his tongue in a pale imitation of what he wants to do with his cock.

“Daddy,” Draco murmurs, half-muffled into Alastor’s mouth. Overwhelmed. His eyes are squeezed shut, distorted with pain. Alastor wants to make it worse. Imagines ignoring Draco’s whimpers and punching his hole with piledriving force, extracting sobs and pleas and gurgles and screams. He drives forward just a bit; it’s careless and neglectful and so very impolite. Draco gasps.

“It still hurts?” Alastor says with gritted teeth, withdrawing the bit he just jammed in. He doesn’t know whether he hopes Draco will say yes or no; probably yes.

“Oh God,” Draco says instead, and his ankles draw nearer to each other until they’re crossed behind Alastor’s back. “You can m-move.”

Alastor doesn’t feel like hesitating so he lunges forward and sinks the full length of his dick into Draco’s passage. He’s sadistically pleased when tears stream from Draco’s eyes. Draco’s crossed ankles demand more movement, pulling Alastor in, betraying Draco’s desire for the onslaught. A few more long thrusts, then some shorter, profligate jabs. The tip percusses Draco’s prostate in a syncopated tempo. Draco’s eyes and cock are leaking. “D-daddy,” and, “Oh,” and “Nnnhgh,” over and over again. Alastor snarls and snorts, almost feral, like a beast cleaving his prey.

Draco comes unceremoniously and unannounced, surprising them both. Ejaculate spurts into the brittle thatch of hair on Alastor’s paunch; his passageway contracts and contorts, egging on Alastor’s vehemence. Alastor is both swollen-headed that his revolting cock exhorted Draco’s release and annoyed that Draco came without his say-so. “I thought I told yeh that yeh’d come when I wanted yeh to,” Alastor spits, his movements becoming increasingly erratic and undisciplined.

“Daddy, I’m sorry!” Draco wails. His passage is now lax and receptive, and Alastor takes advantage by stirring his dick in circles, carving Draco out. Alastor thinks about trying to hold out long enough to bash Draco’s sensitized prostate for a few minutes, but the image of Draco spread out beneath him accepting all Alastor’s ferocity is too much for him to resist and Alastor jerks, groaning an expletive and bursting just moments later.

Alastor collapses with stars and white spots in his vision. Draco is panting underneath him, breathing into Alastor’s collarbone with just a tuft of his hair peeking above Alastor’s shoulder, and Alastor doesn’t want to crush him but he also doesn’t have the energy to move, so instead he just asks, “Draco, y’alright down there?”

A muffled, “Yes, Daddy,” in response. A contented little sigh—Draco means it. He’s relaxed, his legs retreat from Alastor’s back to rest gently on the bed, framing Alastor’s sides. Alastor hears his softened cock slide out of Draco with a crude slurp. He draws a hand up to comb through the part of Draco’s hair that’s not trapped beneath him. It’s wet from sweat and the mess Alastor wiped in there earlier. “You were so good, sweetheart,” he mumbles. “Such a good boy for me.” Alastor shuts his eyes, the decadence of his post-orgasm haze and the secret thrill of power that he’s resting all of his considerable weight on another person lulls him into a comfortable doze. He’s certain Draco’s safe because Draco’s here and underneath him so he’s not going anywhere. There’s nothing left to worry about. Everything is good.

***

A soft, “Alastor?” wakes him up as he’s on the verge of sleep. “Alastor, I need to get up. I have to use the loo.”

Alastor rolls to the side to set Draco free. Now that Draco’s gone Alastor can finally perceive that the bed is cold and slimy with their fluids, so he stumbles to his trenchcoat and pulls out his wand to clean up himself and the bed. He’s just finished the spells when he hears a quiet, “Alastor?” 

Alastor turns to see Draco hovering in the doorway and clutching some nightclothes in front of his groin. “Um, just, I wanted to know, if, that is, I wanted to ask if…” Draco trails off, red.

Alastor’s not sure what Draco’s trying to say, but he hasn’t had a chance to check out how Draco’s body feels yet and it’s suddenly obvious that nothing else is more important than making sure Draco’s okay. Uncaring of his own nakedness, he strides over and pulls Draco completely into the room, turning him every which way and surveying him. No visible bruises. “Does anything hurt?” Alastor asks briskly.

“Er, um, I’m fine—”

Alastor grabs Draco’s chin. “I know yeh can handle pain. Yeh’re stronger than anyone I know. But that’s not what I’m askin’.”

Draco’s eyes are wide and he squeaks and tries to duck his head but Alastor’s grip is intractable. “Y-you think I’m strong?”

“Yes, but yeh’re avoidin’ the question.”

“Um, I guess it hurts a little. Um, inside. But really it’s no big deal!”

“Lie down, on yer stomach. I’ll be right back.”

Draco complies, and Alastor retrieves a healing balm from the medicine cabinet in the lav. He also soaps up a washcloth to clean Draco out, but when he returns he sees Draco has already done that. “I want to use this balm on your anus so that it will heal up good,” Alastor says clinically. “That alright?”

“S-sure, I guess.”

Alastor scoops out a dollop of cream and rubs it efficiently around the perimeter of Draco’s hole. Draco tenses a bit; it clearly hurts more than he was letting on. “It’ll smart a bit when I put it inside,” Alastor apologizes.

“It’s alright. Really. I’m sure I’d survive without—”

Alastor ignores that and gently presses his finger in; Draco’s hole is pliant and easy to breach. He inserts the cream with his finger as far as it will go, taking care to cover Draco’s walls evenly. “It should start working in a few minutes.” Alastor wipes his fingers on the washcloth and uses it to remove some of the excess cream from Draco’s skin.

“T-thanks.”

Draco moves like he’s going to sit up, and without really considering whether he has the right or not, Alastor presses on the back of Draco’s neck to keep him in Alastor’s bed where he belongs. A second later, Alastor is embarrassed by his possessiveness. “Er, sorry ‘bout that. Yeh can sleep in yer own room if yeh’d prefer.”

“It’s okay to stay?” Draco asks, barely a whisper.

“Course.” So Draco pulls on his nightclothes and lies down on his back and Alastor finds the comforter that’s all twisted up on the floor and drapes it over Draco’s prone body. After straightening up the room a bit—folding his and Draco’s discarded clothes, storing the lubricant in the side table—he slides in beside Draco under the covers, not bothering with pyjamas. Draco is lying stiffly, and Alastor doesn’t know if he’s uncomfortable to be in Alastor’s bed or wishes Alastor would put on some clothes or something else entirely. Not sure if anything more will be welcome, Alastor strokes his fingers feather-light over Draco’s arm. “Okay, dear heart?”

Inexplicably, Draco begins to cry. Dismayed, Alastor rolls over so he’s hovering over Draco and can look into his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

But though tears are streaming down his face, Draco is laughing. “Alastor,” he burbles all giggly, “sorry for the mess. Oh God. I’m just so happy, I can’t stop crying. I’m sorry.”

Alastor is confused and a little worried but he leans down to kiss the tears and murmurs, “It’s okay, sweet boy. No need for sorries.”

“Please sleep on me?”

Alastor relaxes on top of Draco, not resting his full weight on him but pinning one of Draco’s sides with his torso and locking down the rest of him with an arm and a leg. Alastor’s head is next to Draco’s, and he turns his head and kisses Draco’s neck because it’s there and he wants to. “This good?”

“Yes, Daddy.” A slight trembling breath, then Draco’s body softens; there’s now enough give for Alastor to compress Draco even further, so he does, and Draco sighs.

Alastor almost falls asleep again before he remembers something: “Sweetheart, what were yeh tryin’ to ask me before? When you came into the bedroom?”

Draco, half-asleep and uninhibited, murmurs, “I was going to ask if I could stay here with you.”

***

Alastor’s eyes open abruptly. It’s like this every morning—a flash of morning sun creeping through the window or a crack from the settling frame of the cottage or the rush overhead of one of those dreadful Muggle ‘eyroplanes’ are all it ever takes to snap him awake and into immediate vigilance. (It’s never the same way falling asleep, unfortunately; that takes hours and hours.)

Today it’s the peculiar sensation of something warm and breathing underneath him that calls him to alertness. When Alastor’s eyes open there are two gray eyes staring back at him. “Gallopin’ gargoyles!”

But it only takes a half second to realize that it’s Draco.

“Good morning,” Draco greets, sounding cheeky. He’s still here, and Alastor’s still got him pinned, half with weight, half with limbs. Draco doesn’t seem unhappy about it, and Alastor isn’t either, so he stays where he is.

“How long were yeh starin’ at me?”

Draco shrugs, as best as he can in this position anyway. “Maybe a half hour?” When Alastor raises his eyebrow questioningly, Draco colors—“I didn’t have anything else to do. It’s not like I could move! And that’s not my fault.”

Alastor shifts to his side, and with one arm still draped across Draco from the top he digs the other between the mattress and Draco’s back to corral him from below. He does the same with his legs, one heavy thigh and wooden baton sprawled across the top and the other full flesh limb shoved despotically underneath. Draco is completely fenced in; Alastor’s naked cock flush with Draco’s hip. Not exactly hard, but not exactly soft, and getting harder by the second, now, actually. “Now yeh’re really trapped,” Alastor announces, tightening all his limbs at once; the new oppression forcing Draco to rotate until he and Alastor are front-to-front.

Alastor knows they need to talk, and it’s not exactly lost on him that they got too distracted last night to call the Aurors about Lowell, which is another problem. But Alastor’s only a human male and Draco hasn’t turned tail and fled yet so he thrusts his throbbing cock against Draco’s stomach, once, twice, thrice. “Yeh want Daddy’s cock this mornin’, lad?” Alastor asks, perversely aware but not caring that he sounds like a lecherous old man because it makes him hot to be Draco’s Daddy.

Especially when Draco squeaks in reply, “Is that okay?”

Alastor doesn’t dignify that with a response. More thrusts, more insistent now. Dick chafing against lightweight cotton; thwarted from the ultimate goal by Draco’s nightclothes. “Get yer clothes off,” Alastor snarls with impatience.

“C-can’t, I’m trapped Daddy,” Draco whimpers. (Upon reflection, this may have been the moment Alastor discovers his kink of ordering Draco to do something that Alastor has himself made impossible.)

“Are you talkin’ back?” Alastor watches Draco’s face for any hint that his language reminds Draco of the bad things, and nothing about his expression changes so Alastor thinks it’s probably okay.

“’M not trying to talk back, really!” Draco makes an effort to wiggle an arm through the nightshirt sleeve, but Alastor clamps down harder. A frustrated huff that makes Alastor darkly chuckle.

Alastor leans down so that his lips are pressed to the shell of Draco’s ear. A nasty urge to push, just a bit, to find out where Draco’s limits are. “I guess I’ll need ter punish yeh for yer disobedience,” he breathes.

Draco tenses this time, and Alastor’s gone too far. A coldness seeps through veins as the reality of what he’s doing to Draco bludgeons him. He’s just like those Death Eaters. He disentangles them. “Sorry, laddie. That wasn’t nice.”

Draco just jumps back forward, monkeying his limbs around Alastor limpet-like. “Don’t go,” he begs. “I’m sorry. I can be good. I won’t get weird like that again.”

Ah, hell. Alastor feels every inch the lecherous old man now, and it’s not hot this time. “Don’ say that. You _are_ good, and that ain’t how any of this works.” Alastor soothes his boy with gentle strokes down his back. “Ain’t need to let me do anything you don’ like. If I say somethin’ stupid like I did just now, that reminds you of… of what happened, you oughtta have a word—somethin’ you say that makes it all stop. Somethin’ you wouldn’t say normally, but that will signal to me that you don’t want it.”

(It occurs to him as he’s talking that he should be telling Draco to head for the hills—not teaching him how to better participate in Alastor’s fucked-up sadistic fantasies.)

“Like a safeword?”

Well, Merlin, that goes straight to Alastor’s dick. “How do you know what that means?” Alastor demands, trying to disguise his increased arousal.

Draco flushes. “I. Ugh. You’ll think I sound like a wanton whore if I say.”

Alastor tugs Draco’s hair in warning. “Don’ call yerself that, and no, I won’ think that.”

“I’ve just looked up some stuff before. Before… what happened, I mean. I was interested in it. Before.”

The morning sun is hot on Alastor’s naked back and the sheets a bit scratchy under his legs and the faintest scintilla of sweat on Draco’s scalp slippery, and Alastor doesn’t know why he’s cataloging his perceptions other than a growing certainty that he needs to be able to anchor this moment solidly in his memory.

“I played around with—restraints, and that sort of thing. Fifth Year, mostly. I was focused on other things in Sixth Year. There were some other boys, we fooled around some. I thought it was kind of thrilling and sexy to be under the control of someone who liked me.

“I’m still interested in that,” he continues, then stops to take a deep breath. “It makes me feel good, and safe, to be under someone else’s… purview.” He relaxes his tentacle grip but only the slightest. “At least when I can trust them,” he adds solemnly. “Doesn’t that make me disgusting? A whore? My control was so thoroughly stolen from me in the Manor. Shouldn’t I want to wrest back any little bit of it that I can?”

Alastor’s not so certain he can be trusted. “The human heart don’t follow any set of rules, laddie.” Alastor doesn’t know what else to say, but he keeps talking anyway. “Sometimes yeh want things that you can’t explain. Or justify.”

“Do you?”

“I’d think that’d be obvious.”

Draco undulates his hips the slightest against Alastor’s naked prick. “You want to do unjustifiable things to me.”

“Merlin.” Alastor keeps one hand in Draco’s hair and uses the other to manipulate Draco’s leg around his hip. A more substantial connection, maintained by Alastor’s proprietary grasp on Draco’s arse. “The things I want ter do to you… the things I’ve already done… they’re more than unjustifiable.”

Draco moans at that, and arches his back—shaping himself more surely against Alastor’s body. Alastor knows they’re headed towards supreme distraction. “Ah, laddie, wait a min—”

“What’s wrong, Daddy?” Draco gasps. His hips piston.

Alastor scrounges up a smidgen of ethics and restraint he’d had in some distant youth and pushes Draco back, just enough to separate their hips. “Tell me yer safeword. Somethin’ yeh’d never say otherwise.”

“Um…” Draco can’t concentrate. His eyeballs are half-rolled back in his head.

“I mean it. Won’ go no further til you give me your word.”

Draco tells him. It’s _rouge_. But right now, he’s _vert_. He’s so, so _vert_.

***

Forty-five minutes later, when Draco is trapped beneath him after being fucked out into oblivion, Alastor remembers that they forgot to call the Aurors about Graeme Lowell again.


	10. August 1999

Nothing is the same after Draco melts down and admits that he doesn’t always say “no” when he doesn’t want to play rough. Alastor wallows in guilt for a few days, calling himself all sorts of terrible names in head, but his self-flagellation begins shifting outward the more Draco tries to entice him. “I’m not in the mood,” Alastor grumbles tonight when Draco lies on top of him in the bed, mouthing little kisses to Alastor’s neck.

“Daddy, you haven’t been in the mood for days,” Draco whines.

That’s part of what is angering Alastor—on the night of the breakdown, Draco had been tearful and apologetic. But ever since the morning after, Draco keeps pretending like nothing happened. Like Alastor didn’t all-but rape him.

Like Draco isn’t breaking Alastor’s heart.

And that’s the real problem. Alastor is guilty—of course he’s guilty. But he’s pissed too, that Draco didn’t safeword! And he’s even guiltier _because_ he’s pissed: Draco is nineteen years old. Alastor is the one who’s responsible for keeping him safe. No one else ever has. Can he really blame Draco for not knowing his own limits? (For being scared to voice his own limits?)

“I’d think it’d be obvious why I’m not ‘in the mood,’” Alastor grumbles back, rolling over in the bed to turn his back on Draco.

Draco leaves him alone for a moment before spooning up to him from behind. “Daddy, are you still mad at me? For… for the other night?”

Alastor says nothing as conflicting answers battle for dominance in his brain. Yes, he’s mad. No, how could he be mad? He’s such an arsehole for being mad—none of this is Draco’s fault. But he’s still so fucking mad.

“Alastor. What happened the other night… it won’t happen again,” Draco mutters solemnly.

Alastor pulls away and swings his legs over the edge of the bed to sit up. “Not really sure how’m s’posed to believe that.”

Draco moves to sit next to him. Alastor notes, out of the corner of his eye, that he’s clenching and unclenching his right fist in the material of his pyjamas. “I was just being stupid. I can be better now.”

Alastor shakes his head. “Yeh weren’t bein’ stupid. Yeh were bein’ young. And scared. But that doesn’t change that it don’ feel right now. To… to treat you like that. To be rough with yeh. Not when I can’t trust yeh to make me stop.”

Draco turns his head away to stare at something in the floorboards. “You don’t get it. I like what we do.”

“Yeah? Well, I _don’t_ like to feel like a sleazy old pervert,” Alastor rejoins, not bothering to reel in his temper.

Draco shoots to his feet, and then, in an (adorable) imitation of what Alastor always does to him, grasps Alastor’s chin in his small, lotion-soft hand and forces Alastor to look at him. “Oh, don’t try to pretend this is all my fault. You and I are both well aware of what a sleazy old pervert you are, Alastor.”

“What exactly are you tryin’ to imply, little boy?” 

That earns Alastor one of his infamous Malfoy sneers. “You think I don’t know? About how you spy on me in the shower? And use that Eye of yours to look under my clothes when I’m sitting at the breakfast table? Yeah, you’re not real subtle. You’re a hypocrite to be mad at me—you’re a lecherous old man all on your own!”

Alastor jerks his head out of Draco’s hand. “You… you know about that?”

Draco’s eyes widen a bit; then he blushes—furiously—all the way from his hairline to his shoulders. “Well. I wasn’t completely sure, ‘til just now.”

Oh Merlin. Alastor has just walked right into the most predictable trap in human history, and now their relationship is irrevocably destroyed. He’s about to say something cliché—Draco, I can explain!—but he can’t explain.

This is the probably the true, most shameful reason for his overwhelming guilt that he’s too afraid to acknowledge: he simply can’t justify how much he wants Draco. How possessive he is over Draco’s mind and Draco’s body; how utterly, insanely, abusively obsessed he is.

“Draco…”

Draco meanders to the little window overlooking Alastor’s vegetable patches. Crosses his arms and stares out.

“Yeh’re right. I’m a lecherous old man,” Alastor chokes out, leaning his elbows on his knees and pressing his face into his hands. “This is why we can’t do this anymore. It ain’t right, the things I’ve done to you. The things I _want_ to do to you. And it weren’t right for me to be angry with you for not knowing yer limits neither; yeh’re just a kid. It weren’t ever on you to keep yourself safe. It’s on me, and I’ve done nothing but take advantage of yeh since you moved in. I’d… I’d understand if yeh wanted to go somewhere else. If yeh’d feel safer not bein’ here. Least I can do is make that happen. I won’t let them send you back to Azkaban. I swear that on me mum’s grave.”

A moment of tense silence passes. Alastor can’t bring himself to look back up. But in the end, he doesn’t have to. Draco returns to him, crashes to his knees on the floor between Alastor’s legs, and insinuates his face right under Alastor’s downturned one. “Daddy.” Tears cling to his blonde lashes, and Alastor is ashamed that he thinks Draco is beautiful like this: crying and on his knees in front of him. “It’s… I was too harsh. I didn’t really mean it when I said you were a lecherous old man.”

Alastor doesn’t understand why Draco is choosing to kneel for him, but he doesn’t want Draco to go away again; he captures Draco’s head between his hands, to feel him (to arrest him). “But I am a lecherous old man,” Alastor breathes out; pressing his forehead into Draco’s forehead, his nose against Draco’s nose; their breath mingles. “I just told yeh. I have been all along. It’s not just that I like hurtin’ yeh, but Merlin knows that’s fucked up. But I’ve spied on you without yer consent—it’s wrong. It’s a crime.”

“No.” Draco blushes. “Well, okay, technically I didn’t consent, but... I didn’t mind. I don’t mind. I’d have done something about if I did. I’ve suspected you were using your Eye on me for like, forever. Well, since around April. I mean, as schoolboys we made so many jokes about how you could do that to the students if you wanted. So it was on my mind. And I just noticed you looking at me kind of funny one day, and…” Draco really goes red then. “And it didn’t bother me. It kind of… it made me hot. That’s when I first became attracted to you. It was like…” The flush extends down Draco’s neck. “You get this look in your real eye when you do it, you know. Like you think I’m this pretty thing, but not just any thing—like I’m your thing, like there’s no question you can do what you want with me because own me. No one ever wanted to own me before. I was all but an orphan when you got me, remember? You took me in. You kept me—and not just the public, polite me. You kept _all_ of me—the rude parts and the lazy parts and the crying parts.”

Alastor is too shocked to speak.

“And, and, Alastor. Merlin. Do you remember when that homeless person punched me?”

“He wasn’t homeless,” Alastor mutters.

Draco ignores him. “The look in your eye when you healed me. It was the same as the look when you ‘spy’ on me. And that’s how I know you’ll always keep me safe.”

Then Draco’s the one to choke up a bit. “And I know I’m all fucked up. And sometimes I can’t keep things straight. Everything feels so weird inside, all the time. Sometimes I’m so happy I can hardly stand it. Sometimes I’m filled with rage, and I imagine grabbing the butcher knife from the counter and stealing your wand and Apparating to Azkaban so I can stab Lucius Malfoy over and over and over again.” Draco’s voice lowers to a whisper. “Sometimes I even want to hurt myself.”

“Instead, you come to me for that,” Alastor remarks dryly, pulling back far enough to put a little distance between their faces; not letting go.

“It’s not like that,” Draco protests. He opens his mouth, closes it. Seeming unsure how to continue. Then his mouth opens again. “Did you know, Alastor? That when I was in Azkaban, sometimes I’d get so bored, but I couldn’t sleep, so I’d like. Lie on the stone cot and just bang my head against it until I passed out.”

“Merlin,” Alastor whispers. He gently traces the back of Draco’s head; cradling it; wondering if there are any hidden fractures underneath his scalp that Alastor hasn’t found yet. He can’t help wanting to find them all. He wishes his Eye could see not just through Draco’s clothes but through his skin and bone.

“I don’t want to hurt myself when you’re owning me, though,” Draco continues. He reaches up to cover the back of one of Alastor’s hands with his own; his hands are so much smaller than Alastor’s, so much paler, with far fewer blemishes. “All my rage disappears, and even the weird, ultra-happy thing, it fades. You look under my clothes or you hit me or you pull my hair and like, all I feel is just peaceful and secure.

“But,” Draco continues, “sometimes I want more from you than my body can take. I don’t even know it until it’s too late. And it’s all wrapped up in, like, how horribly I want you and how scared I am that you’ll get sick of me and send me away. So then it’s like, I’m thinking, all I want is the good feeling, the safety and the, the, peace, and I’m so terrified I’ll lose it. So sometimes when you ask the question—can you be ‘mean’ today?—the answer just seems obvious: say yes.”

Alastor shakes his head, planting a chaste little kiss on Draco’s forehead. “But that’s not the answer, sweetheart. Not if you want to say no.”

“But don’t you get it? I don’t _want_ to say no. I don’t _want_ to have limits. I want to give you everything!”

“No,” Alastor responds firmly. He’s not sure he can be the proper caretaker for this impetuous, brave, stupid, silly, _perfect_ little angel, but it’s apparent that Draco won’t be driven away by even the nethermost of Alastor’s distasteful desires and perversions. Merlin, somehow Draco interprets all his abuse as affection and _wants_ it. And Alastor isn’t noble enough to drive him away: he wants to own Draco just as much as Draco wants to be owned. Alastor can’t let Draco go and Draco wouldn’t let him anyways, so all he can do is try his best to live up to Draco’s unreasonable expectation that Alastor is somehow capable of keeping him safe. “Yeh said it yerself. I took you in and I kept you— _all_ of you. That includes yer limits. That includes the days when yeh’re too tired to have sex. That includes all yer nightmares, and all yer brattiness, and all yer tears. I don’t want some emotionless, mindless slave. I want to own _you_.”

Draco presses his cheek to the bulge of Alastor’s cock, but it doesn’t feel so much sexual as purely intimate. “I understand now,” Draco breathes. Alastor isn’t sure he fully does, but he thinks Draco might be a little closer.

Alastor presses his hand to the back of Draco’s head: squeezing Draco against his groin. Alright, Alastor Jr. is a little interested now. But Draco plainly is too, mashing open-mouthed kisses to the swelling fabric. Alastor lets him fish it out; lets Draco lick it in one smooth motion from the base to the tip before taking the head in his mouth. Worshiping the knurled shaft, cleaning up the smegma. (Not disgusted; never disgusted. He laps up Alastor’s cock like it’s a Jelly Slug.) Draco juts his hands underneath Alastor’s trousers and skims them over the gnarled, bumpy surfaces beneath Alastor’s clothes: exalting his craggy belly and the fleshy folds of his inner thighs.

And Alastor understands now too. He owns all of Draco; and Draco accepts all of him right back.

Alastor can’t help the urge to force more of himself down Draco’s throat. It’s a heady and irresistible compulsion to mark every inch of Draco, inside and out. “I need to fuck you,” Alastor gasps out on one particularly deep thrust. Draco can’t answer verbally, but his eyes confirm he agrees. Tears stream out unendingly. Alastor pulls Draco off his cock by his hair and stands, dragging Draco to his feet in the process. He throws Draco over the edge of the bed onto his stomach. Alastor follows shortly after, landing most of his weight on top of him, grinding his dick against Draco’s arse. “Tell me what you want, and tell me the truth,” Alastor growls against Draco’s ear.

“Please fuck me, Daddy, please, oh God, oh Merlin, I need you, please do it!”

There’s no doubt in Alastor’s mind that Draco is sincere. Not patient enough to do it all manually, Alastor Vanishes all their clothing and Summons the lube from the nightstand. He pours a generous amount onto his hand and over Draco’s hole, then gently inserts a single finger. It’s been a few days after all; Draco has tightened back up.

“D-daddy, it’s okay, I don’t need prep,” Draco gurgles. “Fuck me dry. Just do it.”

“No.” Alastor retaliates by adding more lube. “Yeh said you trust me to keep you safe. So let me do my job.”

Maybe Draco planned to counter him, but Alastor chooses that moment to add a second finger, and Draco is reduced to grunts and whimpers as Alastor bashes his prostate on each intrusion. “God, yeh’re tight,” Alastor murmurs. He’s keeping Draco safe, but he isn’t being gentle; Draco’s prostate is going to be tender and sore. “And you make such pretty noises. Do you even know how many times I watched yeh doin’ yer morning stretches, thinkin’ about shovin’ my cock in this tiny little hole?”

“Daddy!”

“I dreamed about you so much,” Alastor continues. “About smackin’ yer bum.” Without removing his fingers, Alastor punctuates that statement with a sharp slap with his other hand. “About grabbin’ you by yer hair and grindin’ yer face into the floor, fuckin’ you before you left for work, then pluggin’ this little pinprick and makin’ you feel my cum slosh around inside yeh all day.”

“Please… plug me…”

Alastor slaps Draco’s arse again. “I will. Every single day. Even when we go to Ministry functions. Yeh’ll be somewhere across the room, talkin’ to some important people, but you’ll know I’m watchin’.” Alastor shoves a third finger in. “I need somethin’ to entertain me at these stupid events. I’ll have enchanted the plug so it’ll fuck yeh non-stop. And if you let on to anyone else what’s happening, you’ll be in big trouble.”

“What—what’ll you do to me if I misbehave?” Draco sounds perhaps slightly apprehensive, but mostly eager.

“What won’t I do?” Alastor muses, clobbering Draco’s button and eliciting several sharp gasps. “I won’t let you come. Not that night, maybe not even the next day, or the rest of the week. And I’ll paddle you with one of the kitchen spatulas. Hah. That’ll give you some more dishes to do.”

Alastor decides Draco’s had enough prep at this point, so, as per usual, he uses Draco’s hair to clean off the lube from his hands before lining up his cock with Draco’s hole. “And I’ll fuck you dry,” Alastor promises before lodging the entirety of his prick into Draco in a single thrust. Alastor doesn’t give Draco even a second to adjust. “It’ll be just like this,” Alastor explains, pulsing swiftly back and forth like a machine, “except I’ll be the only one enjoyin’ it.”

Based on Draco’s keening, soulful moans, Alastor thinks Draco is at least enjoying thinking about it.

Alastor stops talking, letting himself really relish the slam-fucking he’s giving to Draco. He grips the nape of Draco’s neck in one hand and jams his fingernails into the unprotected skin of Draco’s throat. Draco tries to arch his back, but Alastor’s weight pins him to the bed. Almost embarrassingly quickly, Alastor reaches his peak, and Draco hasn’t yet. Perfect. Alastor lets loose his torrent inside Draco, then commands gruffly in his ear, “Don’t let that out now.” Alastor gets to his feet, a bit shaky, and snags a wooden hanger from the closet, Transfiguring it into a medium-sized plug. (Alastor is a bit overwhelmed and his Transfiguration work is sloppy; the plug comes out uneven and knobby.) He hastily cleanses it with a charm before working it into Draco’s anus, trapping all his seed inside. Draco whimpers.

Alastor bodily flips him over. Draco’s cock is standing proudly, leaking with as much abandon as Draco’s eyes. “This?” Alastor whacks it with his open palm, reveling in the way Draco’s cock bounces off Draco’s thigh before springing back in place. “This is mine. I own it.” Alastor hits Draco’s cock again, and Draco cants his hips—twirling away by instinct, for a second, before willingly putting his cock back in striking range. “Oh, you like that,” Alastor remarks thoughtfully, flicking the tip with his index finger. Draco splutters. “You like that I can do whatever I want with this.”

Alastor grasps the shaft and gives it a few solid pulls before drawing back and smacking it again. “You’re mine to abuse. Mine to fuck. And mine to protect. Only mine.”

“Please! Let me be yours, Daddy!”

One more decent cuff is all it takes for Draco to expel his release all over his stomach with a whimpering little cry.

Alastor draws Draco to the middle of the bed and lies down on top, pressing Draco’s back to the sheets. “I’ve got yeh,” Alastor murmurs into Draco’s hair.

“Thank you,” Draco whispers back. He snakes his hands under Alastor’s armpits, wraps his hands around as much of Alastor’s back as he can, (arms too short to reach around the glut of Alastor’s girth), pulls Alastor’s weight more firmly onto him. The cum still inside him. Accepting Alastor and all his flaws, absolutely. “Thank you for keeping me, Daddy.”

***

After that they decide together that Draco probably needs therapy. Draco has several conditions, all of which Alastor accepts but many of which Alastor doesn’t understand the purpose of (what’s it to Draco if she took Arithmancy at Hogwarts or not? And why does it matter if she uses a black walnut wand?). But the main requirement—the only one Draco actually seems serious about—is that she has to accept Draco and Alastor’s relationship without judgment. Because if she doesn’t, Draco says, he’d rather not get help at all.

(Alastor privately thinks that it would be a good thing if Draco’s therapist questioned this relationship, but he’s too selfish to try to talk Draco out of insisting on this condition.)

Draco meets a few therapists to assess their fit, and though in theory they’re prevented from revealing Draco’s secrets by their oath, Alastor binds them with all six of his own self-designed confidentiality spells just in case. One of them had plainly been uncomfortable with the idea of treating a former Death Eater. The other two had only heard a few sentences about Alastor before lecturing Draco about the myriad unhealthy power imbalances that signify Alastor is ‘taking advantage’ of him. ( _Draco, darling, don’t you think they’re right?_ ) Draco leaves those meetings in fumes.

Fourth time’s the charm with Dr. Lara. Draco wraps himself around Alastor’s arm to prepare for the Side-Along, babbling, “She’s supposed to have a background in BDSM relationships. And trauma. She has to be the one.” Draco is bouncing with nerves, and Alastor thinks about telling him to lower his expectations, but he doesn’t end up saying anything. Even once they pop up in the alley next to the building, Draco keeps holding onto Alastor’s arm, not letting go until they reach the waiting room and a receptionist hands him a veritable stack of forms to fill out.

Alastor helps as best as he can, (no, Draco, I have no idea if yeh’ve ever had a heart condition), and then watches with no small amount of trepidation as Draco goes back into Dr. Lara’s office, alone. Alastor sits on the uncomfortable blue chair in the waiting room for a mind-numbing period of time; the fact that Draco hasn’t stormed out yet is a good sign. Finally, after a full hour, Draco emerges, and a tall, willowy Pakistani woman with thick black glasses follows behind him. Alastor stands to greet them.

“This is Alastor,” Draco states proudly. Alastor sticks out a hand for Dr. Lara to shake.

“Wonderful to meet you, Mr. Moody,” she says in a sibilant tone. Her grip is firm but not painful.

“Alastor’s fine,” Alastor grunts.

Dr. Lara smiles. “Perfect. Well, Alastor, Draco is quite enamored with you. I recommended to Draco that we invite you to join our sessions every once in a while, so I can understand your dynamic from your perspective. It’ll help me get a fuller picture of Draco’s mental state and lifestyle. Think about it, and if you decide that’s something you’re willing to do, please come along with Draco to the appointment we’ve scheduled later this week.”

Draco is looking at Alastor with big, buggy eyes filled with unmistakable hope. Alastor wasn’t expecting this: he’s not like Draco, young and with a full life ahead of him. Therapy isn’t for _him_. But if it will help Draco, then of course he won’t say no. “If yeh think it’ll be good for Draco, course I’ll do it.”

“Not just for me.” Draco puffs his chest out a bit, looking small and fierce and full of compassion and resilience. “For both of us.”

His darling, loving boy. Alastor is beyond saving and he knows it. But it’s not like Alastor could ever say no to his boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a quick note on my rationale for why Dr. Lara won't ever tell Draco he shouldn't date Alastor: she understands that Draco won't get therapy at all if she doesn't accept that he wants to experience what Alastor does to him. So in her mind, she's focused on helping him and Alastor find ways to navigate their (numerous) power imbalances in a healthier way so that Draco can gain better control over his emotions and his trauma, rather than risk Draco rejecting therapy wholesale. At least, that's how I'm rationalizing it. All of this is fantasy lol.


	11. April 2000

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains some fairly intense (totally consensual!) kink! Please heed the tags.

There are days when Draco needs something more intense than an hour or two of ‘mean’ to remind him who he belongs to. When work is too tough or when Draco gets stressed, his mind starts playing tricks on him, starts spiraling with worry that Alastor will send him away. Alastor would never say it to his face, but his boy is sensitive; almost fragile. Emotionally, at least. Physically, Draco can withstand frightening amounts of malevolence, and Alastor counts on that, because malevolence is the surest way to reassure Draco that he’s Alastor’s most cherished object.

When this happens, Draco curls up next to Alastor the night before, bashful, clingy, and looks up at him with some plea swimming in his pupils that he can’t quite put into words. That’s not good enough, of course, and therapy has helped give Alastor the vocabulary to resolve it:

“Sweetheart, tell me what you need.”

(Alastor reflects, not for the first time and almost certainly not the last, that maybe it’s wrong that Draco and Alastor have gotten so much _better_ at playing their sadomasochistic games since they’ve started therapy?)

Draco gulps; his Adam’s apple bobs enticingly, like it always does; his nervousness enthralls Alastor yet more. (Merlin, he could come from Draco’s fear alone.) “I have the day off tomorrow,” Draco ventures. “The whole day.”

“And?”

Draco shrugs. Turns his head away. “Never mind,” Draco attempts.

“Laddie.” Alastor hooks a roughened hand into Draco’s hair. Draco’s hair is his natural leash; Draco goes wherever and whenever Alastor pulls it. “I gave you an order. Tell me.”

“D-daddy. Tomorrow. I want to do Slave Day.”

The label ‘Slave Day’ had been a tongue-in-cheek joke by Draco, but the name stuck. Somewhere along the line, Draco has come to understand that sometimes he needs Alastor to give him a truly brutal day in order to make him feel secure; Alastor pours all his vehemence into owning Draco on Slave Day, and for reasons Alastor may never fully comprehend, Draco wants that.

“I’ve thought up a lot of ideas for yeh this time, boy,” Alastor warns, but he’s gleeful at the thought of another Slave Day. He’s always thinking about new, loathsome things to subject Draco to on Slave Day.

“I figured,” Draco mutters, but he’s smiling too. Probably having been imagining all the things Alastor might subject him to…

“Gonna prove to yeh, lad, that yeh’re my property and I’m never letting you go.” Alastor tugs at Draco’s scalp and makes him cry out, then soothingly fondles the sting. Pulling Draco’s hair is a pale substitute for what he really wants to do: he wants to stick his hand inside Draco’s head and tear out every last niggling worry from his boy’s brain. Maybe Slave Day can’t exactly accomplish that—and maybe nothing Alastor does will ever truly be enough—but it doesn’t make him any less excited to try.

***

Alastor rouses Draco on Slave Day with a stinging slap to the face and a barked order, “Get up, slave.”

“Wha—Alastor—”

Another slap. “Did I give you permission to call me by my first name, slave?”

Draco’s eyes snap open at that. “D-daddy?”

“It’s Slave Day, and yeh’ve got a hell of a day ahead of you, lad. Tell me your color.”

“ _Vert_ ,” Draco responds without hesitation. So Alastor drags him out of bed by the hair and paws off Draco’s night clothes. “No clothes today,” Alastor announces. He leaves the pyjamas in a crumpled heap on the floor and pockets Draco’s four-month old wand to keep it close, just in case something unanticipated interrupts their play. (Constant Vigilance.) As he inspects Draco’s bare body up and down, taking in Draco’s beauty and his scars, old and new, he realizes that a couple things are missing.

Ordering Draco to stay still, Alastor searches through the closet before landing on his first prize: a set of white kneepads that some physician or another had recommended Alastor wear when he gardens. (He never has, which is why his knees are so fucked up now, probably.) Alastor makes Draco put them on and then resizes them so they won’t slip off. Draco doesn’t shrink from Alastor’s pointed wand.

Then Alastor retrieves the metal shackle collar and chain lead from the nightstand drawer. Draco’s eyes fixate on the collar and lead as Alastor snaps it around Draco’s throat and padlocks it. “This stays with me,” Alastor says, holding up the key and then tucking it inside an inner pocket. Alastor attaches the leash to the collar and then pulls Draco flush against his body with the chain.

Draco’s huge, gray eyes look up at him from Draco’s arrested position, and there’s fear there, but also anticipation, and a bit of arousal, and total trust. Alastor feels a rush of affection and protectiveness—maybe what they do together is fucked-up or wrong, and maybe some would say that Alastor’s savagery towards Draco borders on inhumane, but those people haven’t seen Draco’s eyes when he’s conquered like this. If they did, they’d understand why Alastor will never stop abusing him.

(But Alastor would never let another person see Draco like this.)

Satisfied that Draco is ready, Alastor chokes up on the chain, dragging Draco to his tiptoes. “Are you going to be obedient today?” Alastor asks silkily.

Draco nods furiously. Alastor lets out on the chain and points to Draco’s clothes that Alastor tossed carelessly onto the floor. “Pick those up and put them away.” Draco obeys without hesitation, retrieving them and folding them neatly. Then Draco moves to put them in the dresser, but the chain isn’t long enough for him to get there. Draco turns around, sees the chain taut in Alastor’s fist. Alastor could slacken the chain and let Draco complete his task, of course. But he doesn’t.

“D-daddy,” Draco mumbles.

“What?”

“I can’t… I can’t get to the dresser.”

Alastor yanks the chain, making Draco stumble forward, and slaps him across the face. Draco drops the clothes in his surprise, so Alastor hits him again. “I won’t tolerate excuses for disobedience,” Alastor growls, already getting aroused by the new redness on Draco’s cheeks. This is cruel. Alastor knows it’s cruel. He’s put Draco in a no-win situation and then delightedly punished him for it. But Draco needs this today: the knowledge that Alastor will do whatever he wants to Draco, no matter what Draco does. 

With a few tears dripping down his face, Draco bends down to pick up the clothes again. When he stands back up, Alastor caresses one of his reddened cheeks, and Draco leans into the touch. “My poor, mistreated little boy,” Alastor whispers, conveying through his fingers that he’ll show a little mercy to Draco for now. He lets Draco put the clothes away, then tows him from the bedroom into the kitchen. (Alastor doesn’t need to pull the chain as hard as he does; it’s not like Draco isn’t chomping at the bit to succumb to Alastor’s darkest, most depraved whims.) Alastor points to the floor and commands Draco to crawl under the table. He does, and Alastor clips the chain to a discreet metal hook that he’d installed on the floor beneath the table the night before. He doesn’t leave enough give for Draco to get up any further than his knees.

Alastor throws together a simple breakfast of yogurt and rolled oats before sitting down at the table. “Come warm my cock, slave,” Alastor orders. Draco scoots forward on his knees and settles between Alastor’s legs—the chain is tightly drawn and Draco can barely reach. Draco pops the clasp on Alastor’s trousers and envelops Alastor’s prick with his pretty, crimson lips. “If yeh do a good job, I _might_ feed you some of the scraps… if I don’t eat it all first, of course.”

(In reality, Alastor has set aside a full bowl for Draco. He’d never make Draco go hungry. But he likes the look in Draco’s eyes when he threatens to.)

Alastor had jacked off this morning so that he could make Draco do this. He pushes the entirety of his soft cock inside Draco’s mouth—truthfully, the sensation is almost enough to arouse him, but in his experience it will be a few hours yet ‘til he can really get hard. Alastor eats his breakfast with ostentatious noises to remind Draco of his predicament. Luckily for Draco, Alastor has trained him before in how to be a quiet, obedient cocksleeve, so Draco just takes it. Every few moments, Alastor looks down at his lap and admires, as he always does, how grotesque his hairy body looks pressed up against Draco’s smooth, unblemished cheeks.

When Alastor finishes, he reaches below the table to prod Draco’s face, feeling the heft of himself inside Draco’s mouth. “I’ve thought of something more… nourishing that you could have for breakfast,” Alastor comments thoughtfully. Draco’s eyes look up at him questioningly from his lap. God, the boy is so naïve sometimes. Alastor should feel guiltier for corrupting him like this. He pulls Draco off his cock and frames his face with both his hands—Draco’s mouth needs to be free in case he wants to safeword. Alastor’s large hands nearly envelop Draco’s head completely. “It comes from my cock, but it isn’t cum. Would my slave like a warm drink for breakfast?”

Draco’s eyes widen comically. “D-daddy!”

Alastor thrusts his pelvis forward, scouring the side of Draco’s face with his cock. He can tell Draco is shocked but intrigued by the idea. Alastor layers some persuasiveness into his tone. “It’s just another way for me to mark my territory. From the inside out.”

Merlin, Draco looks _hungry_ for it now. Alastor nudges Draco’s lips with his soft cockhead and Draco willingly—no, eagerly—accepts it back in. Alastor takes that as a _vert_ and, once he’s safely to the hilt, he releases a pungent, steaming stream of piss directly down Draco’s throat. “Swallow it all, slave.”

It’s an unreasonable demand. Alastor had been saving this since last night, so his waste surges torrentially from his penis. A lot of it surely goes directly down Draco’s throat, but there’s just too much of it for him to handle it all—transparent yellow liquid spurts from Draco’s nose and leaks from his lips around Alastor’s cock, landing on the kitchen tile.

“Such a sloppy slave I own.” Alastor pulls his cock from Draco’s mouth and shakes the remaining droplets onto Draco’s upturned face. He slaps Draco’s face with his cock. “You’ve made a big mess.” Alastor shoves two fingers into Draco’s mouth and grasps his tongue. “Clean it up. With this.”

If Alastor had had any doubts about pissing in Draco’s mouth on Slave Day, they’re dissolved by Draco’s complete lack of hesitation when he presses his face to the dirty floor and licks up Alastor’s urine. He laves the floor for a few minutes, and the floor’s not really clean, and Alastor can see that some dust and crud has settled into the sticky remains. Draco looks up in question, but Alastor shakes his head. “You’re not done, boy.” Draco returns to his task and does the best he can; pressing his face completely against the tiles. Alastor’s cock twitches at the sight.

“And my cock too,” Alastor orders, and Draco sits back up—piss still dripping from his nose, and Alastor can only imagine how uncomfortable that must feel—and shakily tries to wipe up Alastor’s cock with his tongue. Honestly, given how soiled Draco’s face is, Draco is probably making Alastor’s dick dirtier. But Alastor still likes how Draco looks, on his knees, chained to the floor, with grime and Alastor’s urine all over his face. And even though Alastor’s an ancient old fart who already came that morning, his cock ascends to full hardness at the heady sight of his debauched, demoralized slave.

Draco doesn’t hesitate to respond. The acrid taste of urine seems not to bother Draco at all—if anything, Draco sucks Alastor’s cock like it’s as tasty as a liquorice wand. The protruding veins catch on Draco’s lips with every pass, and eventually Alastor is able to muscle his dick down Draco’s throat. Draco has really become quite skilled at deepthroating. Alastor smacks Draco’s face with his pelvis on each thrust—barrages Draco’s forehead with his furry, sagging belly and besieges Draco’s chin with his wrinkled testicles. “My little—“ _thrust_ —“slave”— _thrust_ —“is obsessed with Daddy’s piss!”

The ravenous heat in Draco’s eyes confirms it.

Alastor erupts down Draco’s esophagus, depositing his cum straight into his belly along with his piss. “Fuck,” is all Alastor can say when Draco dutifully accepts it. Alastor sits for a moment with his softening cock in Draco’s mouth, just looking at him. Draco’s prick is hard, but Draco makes no move to touch it.

Alastor unhooks the chain from the floor and helps a trembling Draco into the lavatory. They’re both kind of filthy at this point, so Alastor runs a bath and then gets in, beckoning Draco to sit with his back to Alastor’s chest between his knees. Alastor uses a warm, wet washcloth to rinse Draco’s face. “You looked so pretty covered in my piss,” Alastor mutters into Draco’s ear. Draco whimpers. Alastor moves his hand down to Draco’s solar plexus, kneading it forcefully, making Draco grunt. “And it’s all still in here too. Sloshing around. All of my essence, marking every little bit of you inside.”

“Thank you Daddy,” Draco whispers—apparently not capable of anything louder at the moment.

After they’re both clean, Alastor helps Draco stand at the sink and brush his teeth, and then for good measure, Alastor pries open Draco’s mouth, sticks his wand in, and casts a breath freshening charm. “Have you had enough of Slave Day yet?” Alastor asks gruffly. He’s already pushed Draco to several new highs today and would understand if Draco wanted to be done.

But Draco shakes his head.

“You sure, sweetheart?” Alastor asks, breaking the roleplay for a moment. “You seem exhausted.”

Draco smiles up at him with that blinding faith of his that Alastor doesn’t deserve, given that it makes Alastor want to whack him harder. “Yeah. I know, Daddy.”

But Alastor still gives Draco a bit of a break to rest and eat before they resume. He leaves the collar on, but he removes the chain, for now. (Alastor Vanishes the pissy mess under the table before directing Draco to sit for his breakfast.) When Draco finishes his meal and rinses his dish, Alastor asks, “Yeh ever scrubbed a floor by hand, laddie?”

“No, Daddy.” Draco has always been in charge of keeping the floors clean, but he uses his wand now, and before that, a broom and mop.

“Well, I reckon yeh’ll get the hang of it right quick.” Alastor pulls a bucket, a rag, and pink rubber gloves out from under the sink. “I could do this by wand, o’ course, but the view wouldn’t be as pretty. Hands and knees, slave.”

A few moments later, dressed in nothing but his knee pads and the pink gloves and the collar, Draco crawls to scour the grimy kitchen tiles. He dips the rag into the soapy bucket and slings it across the floor in sharp, confident movements—undaunted by his degradation and sure in his own subservience. Draco’s arse is round, and his thighs flex taut and loose as he skims across the floor. Alastor’s dick remains stubbornly soft (he’s too old to come three times in as many hours), but Alastor is suddenly overcome with the need to shove _something_ in Draco’s passageway. Maybe it’s evil, but Alastor wants to destroy Draco’s composure—wants to see if he can make Draco cry and beg instead. (And fine, maybe he also just wants to see something in his arse.)

Alastor rummages under the sink again and finds what he’d thought was there: an old feather duster. It’s a low-quality tool with a short, thin plastic handle. The shaft is uneven and corrugated due to poor Muggle craftsmanship. The feathers are scratchy and shocking pink, which will match well with Draco’s gloves. It’s perfect. Alastor casts a discreet sanitizing charm before calling for Draco’s attention.

Draco looks over his shoulder with concern. “Is something wrong, Daddy? Am I doing okay?”

“Get over here,” Alastor orders, not answering. Draco starts to stand, which Alastor had figured would happen sooner or later. He sends a wordless stinging hex at Draco’s arse, making him yelp. “Did I tell yeh you could stand, slave?”

Draco collapses back down in a way that makes Alastor empathize with his knees before crawling over on hands and knees. He already looks a little nervous; perfect. Alastor holds up the feather duster in front of Draco’s eyes. “See this, boy? I just pulled this out from under the sink.” Alastor doesn’t mention the cleaning charm. “I want to add a little decoration to your outfit. Head on the ground, arse towards me.”

By Merlin, Draco complies, turning around and shoving his own face into the wet tile and lifting his pert, perfect arse high into the air for Alastor’s amusement. Alastor lines the thin handle up with Draco’s hole and shoves it in, not bothering to lube it up—Alastor’s aiming for a pained grimace, and he achieves it. Alastor had just planned to put it in and send Draco back to work, but now that he has Draco right in front of him, he can’t resist fucking Draco with it a few times, relishing in Draco’s anguished moans upon each scrape of the unyielding, irregularly-shaped plastic shaft.

When Alastor gets bored of playing, he wedges the duster in all the way in so that only the fluffy end sticks out. Draco moans; the dry stick had almost certainly grazed his prostate. “Well? What are yeh waitin’ for? Keep scrubbing, slave.”

Alastor relocates to one of the armchairs to watch the show, and Draco makes a sincere effort (the dear boy) to keep cleaning. It’s clear that the bizarre handle is pressing against his button whenever he scoots, but Draco powers through it and manages a few good minutes of scouring. By the time Draco starts looking too comfortable, Alastor’s sadistic urge to push him even further kicks in. Alastor points his wand and mutters a spell to set the handle in motion.

Draco squeals and collapses onto his forearms as the dry plastic tool, now self-propelled, draws almost all the way out of his anus and then launches back in, over and over, in a steady, mechanical rhythm. Alastor gives Draco a couple thrusts to adjust, but when Draco shows no sign of continuing to scrub, Alastor shoots another long-distance stinging hex at Draco’s arse. “I didn’t tell yeh you could stop working,” Alastor growls.

“Daddy,” Draco sobs, but he manages to get back up on his hands. His scrubbing is next to useless at this point; he’s basically just pushing water back and forth on the floor. Alastor starts varying the rhythm and depth of the fucking and gradually increases the intensity. Every time Draco collapses, Alastor sends a stinging hex to Draco's flank—each one more severe than the last—to spur obedience.

Without announcement or ceremony, the feather duster finally brings Draco to orgasm all over the floor. “What a naughty slave,” Alastor comments—his voice is nonchalant and impassive. (He’s thrilled on the inside.) He thrusts the feather duster to the hilt again and commands Draco, “Clean that up and come over here.” Draco wipes at his release, Alastor thinks it’s quite magnanimous of him not to punish Draco for using the rag rather than his lips.

Alastor had installed another floor hook in front of the armchair, and when Draco arrives, Alastor reattaches the chain to the collar and fastens it to the floor with little slack. “Hands and knees. It's time for a break.” Alastor manhandles Draco’s body until it’s perpendicular to the chair. “What a perfect back you have,” Alastor compliments him. Alastor leans back in the armchair and lifts his legs.

Then Draco screams. “ _Rouge!”_ He jerks away, but the chain aborts his attempt to escape. “ _Rouge, rouge, rouge,_ ” Draco repeats over and over, almost manic. He huddles on the ground with his hands braced protectively over his head. “Daddy, _rouge!_ ”

***

  
The roleplay stops.

***

In an instant, Alastor spells away the chain and the collar and the duster and gathers Draco up onto his lap. “Shh, darling, you’re alright,” Alastor murmurs into Draco’s ear, rocking him back and forth. “I’ve got yeh. So proud of you for safewording. You’re so good, Draco. Such a good boy.”

Draco sobs and garbles out something unintelligible.

“Draco, baby, I don’t understand what yeh said. What happened?”

“You were gonna kick me,” Draco weeps. A hint of betrayal in his tone.

“No, no, darling.” Alastor rubs his hands up and down Draco’s shivering, trembling back. “I promised yeh I’d never do that. And I meant it.”

“Then w-what was that?” Draco asks, sounding accusatory.

“I was going to use yeh as a footstool,” Alastor admitted, wondering if he should feel embarrassed. He’s had fantasies about making Draco serve him in such a demeaning way for a while now.

“A footstool?!” Draco sounds like he might horror-struck by the idea.

“Yeah,” Alastor grunts. “I shoulda thought to tell yeh what I was doin. Didn’t mean to scare you like that.”

Draco doesn’t respond. Alastor had not expected Draco to be against this idea, honestly; though perhaps too intense for a regular ‘mean’ day, it had seemed to Alastor that being turned into furniture would be the precise type of possessive degradation that Draco would crave on Slave Day. Alastor’s fantasy had seemed like an especially apt one after Draco had so easily accepted his piss earlier. He wonders if it reminds Draco too much of—

“Alastor, oh Merlin, please do that to me, I want it!” Draco starts blubbering.

Oh. So he hadn’t been afraid; he’d been excited. Alastor feels a little smug that he’d predicted Draco’s reaction with such accuracy.

“Let’s sit here for a tick first. Yeh just had a mighty scare.”

Draco doesn’t seem too bothered by that edict; he just curls himself up into a tiny ball on Alastor’s lap. Alastor runs his hands up and down Draco’s back and through his hair, no real aim, just wanting to touch and feel. They sit in quiet stillness for a long time like that; Alastor thinks Draco might have fallen asleep.

“Alastor?” Draco finally asks, sounding tired and blissed out.

“Yes, darling?”

“You’re really going to use me like a piece of furniture?”

Alastor almost says something like, ‘We can be done for today if you want,’ or ‘You don’t have to do anything that scares you’ or even ‘You’re exhausted, let’s stop’—but he doesn’t think any of that is what Draco wants to hear right now. No, Draco’s phrasing— _‘_ you’re _going_ to do this?’—shows that what Draco needs is the reassurance that Alastor won’t falter in giving Draco what he requires. “Yes, dear lad. I’m going to rest my foot and my wooden peg on your naked back and make yeh withstand it, maybe for an entire hour. And you, my pretty, pretty slave, are going to be perfectly still the entire time. You’ll be my beautiful, obedient footstool.”

Draco curls one hand around Alastor’s bicep. Clings and bites his lip. “And, maybe, y-your treasured footstool?”

As if he even has to ask. (But he does have to ask; that’s what Slave Day is all about.) Alastor captures Draco’s lips and plunges his tongue inside, making Draco gasp as Alastor dominates the kiss. Using his tongue to fuck Draco’s mouth, making Draco gag on the excess saliva. “Yes, Draco, you’re my treasured footstool and my treasured slave,” Alastor snarls into Draco’s mouth, their teeth clink and Alastor bites down hard enough to draw blood from Draco’s bottom lip. “My treasured everything.” Alastor licks up the blood while Draco whimpers.

Alastor rapes Draco’s mouth for a few minutes; Draco is compliant and yielding to the assault. But then Draco breaks away, breathing hard. “What is it, darling?”

“Daddy, I need more.”

***

The roleplay resumes.

***

Alastor pushes Draco off of his lap, and Draco lands in a heap on the floor. Draco rearranges himself into the tabletop position without Alastor even needing to order him to, though. Alastor conjures back the collar, chain, and feather duster, and sanitizes the duster again.

“Did you do that before?” Draco asks, looking at the clean duster.

“Course I did.” Alastor strokes Draco’s cheek lightly before jimmying it back into Draco’s arse with no forewarning, making Draco arch his back and moan. “Yeh’ve become such a sl—such a fiend for a dry fucking,” Alastor remarks, absently pushing the duster in and out.

“Y-yes, Daddy!”

Alastor pushes it all the way in again, then re-locks Draco’s collar and attaches the chain. “I’m gonna hold on to this this time,” Alastor murmurs, tugging on the chain. “I don’t want my precious little object getting scared again.”

“Thank you, Daddy!”

“I’m goin’ to lift my legs and put them on yer back now,” Alastor warns. Draco nods that he understands, so Alastor pulls his legs up and then drops them onto Draco’s back with just a little force. Draco lets out a small ‘oof.’ “Yeh’re the perfect height for me,” Alastor compliments, shifting around until he’s comfortable.

“Daddy—”

“Now now. Footstools don’t make noise unless they want to safeword,” Alastor croons. He gently tugs the chain just to remind Draco he’s holding onto it, and Draco sighs before closing his eyes. Alastor Summons the Daily Prophet from the counter in the kitchen and peruses it leisurely.

This meeting of foot and back is somehow more powerfully intimate than anything they did earlier that morning. The physical connection is constant, uninterrupted; Alastor’s legs can continually perceive the soft acceptance of Draco’s body yielding to Alastor’s ownership, reassuring Alastor that Draco truly does enjoy this indignity. Even when Draco starts to get a little quivery around the thirty-minute mark, Alastor can still _feel_ Draco’s surrender to that floaty place of peace that helps Draco manage his moods and trust in his own worth.

Alastor still checks in with Draco around that time, just to gauge his level of exhaustion and make sure he hasn’t forgotten how to speak. Alastor finds the crossword at the back of the newspaper and chooses a moderately difficult question. “Footstool, permission to speak. Six-letter word for ‘Eagle-eyed’?”

“Oh. Um.” Draco breathes silently for a few beats, but Alastor recognizes the expression Draco’s face: thinking. Finally, Draco suggests, “Have you tried Rowena?”

Alastor checks the puzzle and, sure enough, Draco’s suggestion fits. Though his voice is soft, pliant, he’s still sharp—his boy is so damn smart, even when he’s being overwhelmed with fuzzy feelings of submission and ownership. A surge of some emotion—a strange mix of affection, pride, and sadistic satisfaction—rushes through Alastor at the additional reminder that yes, no matter how many times Alastor checks, Slave Day is a good thing for Draco. “Thanks, love,” Alastor says, giving the chain a gentle pull of acknowledgment. “Quiet again now.”

Draco’s eyes slide shut; a small, pleased smile on his face.

After another half hour passes, Draco’s arms have gone from quivery to noodly, and Alastor finished the paper a while ago so he’s getting just a bit bored of sitting still. Alastor removes his feet and plants them next to Draco’s body, then tugs the chain a bit to draw Draco’s attention. “Draco, sweetheart,” he can’t help but say, breaking the roleplay a little. “Permission to speak. Have you had enough of Slave Day? Or do you want more?”

It takes Draco a moment to come out of his hazy, furniture-induced haze. Draco slowly turns his head to look Alastor straight in the face and, in a tired, tremulous tone, begs, “I want more, Daddy.”

Alastor hesitates for a just a second. Sometimes the wants of Draco’s mind don’t match up to the realities of Draco’s body; sometimes, Draco chases this peaceful feeling too far. It’s Alastor’s job to be vigilant.

But even though Draco is exhausted, he’s still upright. His eyes long for more; and even if it’s cruel, Alastor still wants to give him more. He hasn’t reached his breaking point; Slave Day is all about reaching the breaking point. It doesn’t take much to twist Alastor’s arm.

So Alastor doesn’t stop.

***

Draco pushes for more throughout the entire rest of the day. They take a quick break for lunch and water after the footstool scene, but after that, Alastor spends the afternoon assigning Draco all sorts of horrible, humbling chores. Draco cleans the fireplace naked, scrubs the toilet with a toothbrush (and licks the final product with his tongue, per Alastor’s order), and gets up on a ladder, stark naked but for the feather duster, to remove the cobwebs from the corners of the ceiling. Alastor finds that both he and Draco love the feather duster—it never seems to get boring to surprise Draco with a few taunting scrapes of the funky stick. Draco comes two more times just from that.

And through all this, Draco somehow gets a second wind, which means Alastor has to push back even harder if he wants to figure out what will make him break.

Around 4pm, Alastor drags Draco to the backyard. Alastor makes Draco get a lounging chair out of the shed and set it up for him near the backdoor. After sitting down and sighing in relaxation, Alastor unhooks the chain from Draco’s collar and barks, “It’s teatime, slave. Bring some out for me.”

Draco stares at Alastor like he’s asked Draco to commit a murder. It’s the first time today that he’s not hopped to obey.

“Is there a problem, slave?”

“I just, I mean… tea?”

“Yes, Draco, it’s this hot liquid that loads of Brits love to drink around this time of day,” Alastor drawls, unable to resist the sarcastic dig. “Serve me some. On the tray, mind you.”

“Um. Okay.” Draco emerges from the cottage a few minutes later with a single mug of piping hot tea, sugar, and biscuits, all laid out on the tray. “Um, where should I put this?”

“Just kneel.”

Draco blushes when he understands that _he’s_ where he’s going to put the tray. He kneels next to the lounging chair and holds the tray flat on his palms. He bites his bottom lip from the strain of the position. Merlin, that’s a pretty image. “Stay still now,” Alastor orders. “If any of this spills, it comes out of your hide.” Alastor takes his time imbibing just to enjoy the occasional slight tremors in Draco’s arms that make the tea tray shake. He almost hopes Draco drops it…

After a few moments, Draco ventures hesitantly, “M-may I ask a question?”

Alastor shrugs. “Go ahead.”

“I thought. I thought you didn’t. Merlin. That is to say, Constant Vigilance?”

For a moment, Alastor is confused by Draco’s faltering, undefined question. But then he sees Draco’s big gray eyes dart nervously to the teacup in Alastor’s hand, which is already half empty. And Alastor is drawn up short, because he hasn’t eaten or drank something someone else made for him in over two decades—not until this very second. It hadn’t even occurred to him that Draco was someone else. Draco—his slave, his lover, his best friend, his boy—is just an extension of Alastor’s very self.

Alastor trusts Draco with his life. Or maybe it’s not that; maybe it’s that Draco _is_ his life.

Alastor downs the rest of the tea in a single gulp and orders Draco onto his hands and knees. This stunning revelation, combined with the intoxicating images of Draco’s bent, laboring body that Alastor has been drinking in for hours, finally hardens Alastor’s cock to its throbbing, monstrous girth. Alastor yanks the feather duster out of Draco (so quickly it makes him gasp) and pokes Draco’s dry hole with the tip of his cock—threatening the hole with undisguised intention. “Have you had enough of Slave Day yet?”

“Noooo…”

Alastor doesn’t wait for more permission. The entry is difficult; he and Draco have fucked dry before, but that was comfortable in bed and with significant fingering beforehand—not out in the middle of the garden with Draco’s elbows in the grass and only a thin feather duster having stretched Draco out beforehand. Merlin, the scrape of his cock inside is even a little painful for Alastor. But Alastor doesn’t care. God, he wants to make Draco fucking _strain_. A ruthless, lustful, passionate sadism overcomes him, agitating his fury, compelling him to persecute and beat and mistreat this perfect boy in front of him. He trusts Draco with his life. Draco trusts him back.

For Draco, it’s less like a fuck and more like a beat-down. Alastor doesn’t bother holding back any fraction of his energy, pummeling Draco’s insides with his cock on each thrust. He’s not about to finish anytime soon, not given the fact he’d already come twice that day. Draco eventually collapses onto his face, sobbing from the endless onslaught. But if he was hoping his misery would make Alastor slow down, it doesn’t: it only inflames Alastor to flatten Draco’s face into the dirt with a roughened hand. Draco’s tears leak into the grass and muddy up the ground, leaving Draco covered in dark, earthy streaks.

Alastor eventually decides to change their position, withdrawing and pawing Draco onto his back. Draco is completely soft, and blood oozes sluggishly from his anus all over Alastor’s driving iron. Draco stares up at him, tearful and grimy and debauched; slides open his skinny legs around Alastor’s cruel hips; wraps his quaking arms around Alastor’s shoulders.

“M-more, Daddy!”

It’s too much for Alastor: the tea, all he’d subjected Draco to throughout Slave Day, the hot, tight, fluttery confines of Draco’s hole. Draco’s obscene devotion to and obsession with Alastor’s degrading, defiling cock. Alastor jams his arms underneath Draco’s armpits and clamps his hands around Draco’s head, rutting ferally like a wild animal. Alastor mates Draco with abandon for several minutes while Draco keens in brutalized agony. Then Alastor comes in a dozen jerky spasms, breeding Draco’s body with his seed. He deflates on top of Draco, breathing heavily into Draco’s mouth as his cock grows soft in Draco’s body.

“I-I think I’ve had enough now,” Draco finally whispers just seconds before he passes out in the dirt.

***

Alastor uses a spell to levitate the unconscious Draco to the bathtub, where he takes off the collar and scrubs him clean before transferring him to Alastor’s bedroom. There, Alastor lays Draco out and applies a few varieties of healing balms (one for Draco’s battered knees; one for the friction burn the collar etched into his throat. One Alastor bought at a specialty shop designed specifically to disinfect and heal the bloody tears that Alastor leaves in Draco’s anus when he fucks him dry and ruthless like that.) Draco sleeps through all of it. When he wakes up about an hour later, he crawls up onto Alastor’s chest, shivering and vulnerable. Alastor is ready with water and dinner, and, lying together in bed, Alastor feeds Draco crackers and cheese and fig jam by hand until Draco is stuffed.

“Daddy?” Draco murmurs a few minutes after he’s finished eating. Alastor has pulled a soft comforter around them both, which seems to be helping with Draco’s shivers.

“Yes, my dearest?”

“Will you tell me a story?” Draco’s voice goes a bit higher pitched than normal, almost childlike.

Alastor frowns at the curious request. “What kind of story?”

“I want to know the story of how you rescued your slave.”

Alastor rubs his hand up and down Draco’s back. He’s a bit disarmed by the innocent, earnest timbre in Draco’s voice. Alastor isn’t sure if Draco wants a true recounting of how he and Alastor met, or if he wants some fantasy tale—and if so, what kind? Some more inquiry is required. “Rescued? How do you know I didn’t kidnap yeh?”

“You definitely rescued me,” Draco states with authority.

“Who’d I rescue you from?”

“Um. The evil… king?”

Alright, so Draco wants a fantasy. “That I did,” Alastor plays along. “Well, as yeh know, I was a commoner in a faraway kingdom. A hulking, nasty brute of man who moved rocks for a living.” Alastor thinks about taking that back since ‘moving rocks for a living’ isn’t really an occupation, but Draco just nods in acceptance so he leaves it alone—it’s his fantasy story, after all. “And one day, a message went out throughout the entire kingdom: anyone who slays the dragon can go straight to the king himself and request any prize. I had the perfect prize in mind.”

“What was that, Daddy?” Draco asks with an intense, expectant gaze.

“I wanted to claim the lovely prince. And I would do anything to get him. So I journeyed to where the dragon was terrorizin’ the countryside, and, with my bare hands, I ripped its heart from its chest.”

Draco shivers a bit at the violent imagery. “I don’t believe you,” Draco counters. “You must have used a sword.”

“Hah. Why would I need one when I’ve got these?” Alastor stroked one of said hands up and down Draco’s naked torso, tweaking Draco’s nipples just a bit to draw out a tiny little gasp. “I took the dragon’s heart back to the main castle and requested an audience with the king.

“When I got into the throne room, the king was sitting in his throne. Off to the side, in another chair, there you were. The prince. You were dressed in the finest silk, and had the haughtiest little expression on your face. I presented the heart to the king, and the king asked, ‘What is your prize?’ And I pointed at you, and I said, ‘Him, as my slave.’

“The king was livid, so I challenged him to a duel,” Alastor continues. This story is truly senseless, Alastor realizes; a real-life peasant would get himself executed for simply making the challenge. Draco doesn’t seem to notice the historical inconceivability though, so Alastor marches onward. “He and I faced off in the throne room: this time, with swords,” he embellishes for Draco’s benefit. (Why didn’t they duel with wands? Is there not magic in this fantasy kingdom? But there was a dragon...? Ah Merlin, who cares.) “And I killed him.”

“How, Daddy?”

“Um.” Alastor considers for a minute. He hasn’t thought this far ahead, and as much as he’d like to describe tearing Lucius limb-from-limb in excruciating, anatomically-correct detail, he worries that maybe Draco won’t want that sort of violent imagery tonight. “I defeated him in battle, and, he was so humiliated at the loss that he just keeled over and died.”

Draco giggles. Phew.

“So there I was in the middle of the throne room, and I looked up at yeh in that silly chair of yours. Yeh were wide-eyed. Frightened. I thought that you thought you were next. But I was wrong, because a second later, you stumbled down from your throne, down the dais, and landed on yer knees in front of me. And you grasped my right hand and you kissed it, murmuring, ‘Thank you, Daddy, thank you.’”

Draco inhales sharply, clenching the fabric on Alastor’s chest. Alastor runs a hand down Draco’s spine.

“I stroked your hair, and I said, ‘Boy, what are you thanking me for? You should be scared. Yeh’re my slave now.’ And yer big bug eyes stared up at me, and you just said, ‘For good?’

“So I yanked you to your feet by your hair. And I tore off all yer fine silk, showin’ you just what I thought of those ostentatious pretentions. Then I looped a rope about yer neck, tightening it just…so…” Alastor punctuates that with a little squeeze to Draco’s throat. “And I dragged yeh out to the courtyard, where my horse was waiting, and I took yeh home with me.”

“Daddy, did you make me walk behind the horse?” Draco asks. He sounds worried, vulnerable, so Alastor assures him, “No, no. You sat behind me in the saddle. I let yeh cling to me for the whole the trip.”

Draco breathes in relief, which in turns makes Alastor relieved that he made the right narrative choice. Alastor goes on. “When we got to my broken-down shack—”

“It’s not broken-down,” Draco interrupts. “I’m sorry I ever said that.” He sounds truly guilty.

Alastor chuckles and smooths his hand over the back of Draco’s head; easy forgiveness. Draco will surely insult the cottage again sometime. Alastor doesn’t mind. “Alright, fine, I’ll stop teasin’ yeh about sayin’ that. When we got home, I helped you off the horse, and you were all wobbly. You were exhausted, and you deserved a break. But not too much of one,” Alastor warns. “Because it was yer first night with yer new owner. So something important needed to happen first.”

Alastor insinuates his hand between Draco and the mattress, caressing Draco’s right arse cheek. “What was that important thing, slave?”

“My brand.”

“That’s right. Since you’re property, you needed to be marked as property, to make sure no one else could steal yeh away from me. I put you on your hands and knees in front of the fire and, once I got the branding iron hot, I marked you. Right here.” Alastor pinches Draco’s right arse cheek. “And you screamed somethin’ fierce, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was seeing my mark.”

“D-did I get an infection?”

Alastor almost chuckles; but he feels a rush of tender pity, too, that Draco would even think it was worth asking. He needs the reassurance of his worth. “Course not. I properly cleaned you and the brand before and after, and treated the wound for weeks,” Alastor promises. “And then, you were marked as mine, for good. And for the rest of your days, you served all my needs in the broken-down, decrepit cabin that I ought to sell before the market tanks. The end.”

“Daddy, you left out the part where you fucked me the night you branded me.”

“I left that out because I didn’t fuck you the night I branded you,” Alastor reminds him, a little sternly. “That would have been too dangerous for the wound.”

That seems to be the right answer, because Draco hums in satisfaction and snuggles further into Alastor’s side. “Daddy, I like being owned by you,” Draco slurs, already half-asleep. “You’re a kind owner.”

Alastor thinks that’s probably debatable, but he doesn’t respond. It never ceases to humble Alastor that this bright, beautiful young man is willing—no, desperate—to be kept like this. That he trusts Alastor to hurt him just enough, just as much as Alastor trusts Draco not to. “I like owning you,” Alastor finally replies, softly. “And I liked spendin’ the whole day remindin’ you just how owned you are.”

There’s silence for a few minutes, and then Draco starts emitting soft snores. His boy is truly tuckered out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I was looking up British golf terms to try to think of some new metaphors for Alastor’s cock. First, if you check out this website, https://www.golfonline.co.uk/golf-glossary, there are so many ridiculous names for things in golf that sound like sexy euphemisms: ‘deep rough,’ ‘cock wrist,’ ‘stroke play,’ ‘foursome;’ there are also several things that sound particularly kinky, like ‘face insert,’ ‘maraging steel,’ ‘punch shot,’ and ‘sand wedge.’ 
> 
> I ended up going with ‘driving iron’ in text, partly because I had had the word ‘iron’ in mind when I was trying to think of something, and partly because of the definition, which I think fits: “Another name for the 1 or 2 iron, often one with a larger more forgiving head than usual.” So yes, in golf, ‘forgiving’ is a quality associated with the club that has something to do with scoring or something, but… c’mon. “[F]orgiving head”????? “[L]arger . . . than usual”??? My goodness. I’ve literally never cared about golf in my life, but now I’m starting to wonder if this isn’t why so many rich, power-hungry men are into golf.


	12. June 6, 1999

Draco wears his fancy blue dress robes to the Ministry. Alastor thinks about trying to talk him out of it; it’s frankly a little embarrassing to go through the public entrance with Draco next to him decked out like he’s going to a gala. But the rest of Draco’s clothes are a bit shabby right now. Not fit for going into public, Draco says with a sneer as he pulls his arms through the sleeves. So Alastor doesn’t say anything.

He does take his fill of Draco’s body while he squirms into his elegant clothing, though.

After stumbling out of the telephone booth lift and into the Atrium, Draco looks around warily as hordes of witches and wizards in a hurry stream past them on all sides. “Yeh alright there, lad?” Alastor asks, fiddling a bit with his visitor’s badge. He wants to put his hand on Draco’s back to steer Draco through the crowd, but he’s hesitant to touch Draco in public. Draco doesn’t seem like the type who would take kindly to a display of affection from an old geezer like Alastor when Draco’s plainly trying to make a good impression.

But Draco surprises him by looping his hand through Alastor’s elbow of his own accord, much like Draco does whenever he and Alastor stroll by the waterfront in the village. “Is this alright?” Draco mumbles. His gaze is fixedly not on Alastor, but directed somewhere near the fountain.

“Course, why wouldn’t it be?”

“People might think I’ve taken you hostage or something.”

Alastor grunts a hearty guffaw at that. “Lad, hate to break it to yeh, but ain’t no one out there who thinks you could get the better of me.”

Draco glances upward at that, giving Alastor a shy, brilliant grin. Amusement and affection sparkle in Draco’s eyes; Alastor wonders if maybe this boy has gotten the better of him after all.

People do, indeed, give them strange looks as Alastor leads Draco through the discord. Alastor tries to ignore them, but it’s plain as day that the public is curious. Draco’s appearance at the Mid-Winter Gala a few months earlier had caused a stir just like this. Draco holds his chin up high, plastering on his best Lucius-Malfoy-esque sneer as they walk towards the main lift. But Alastor can feel his hand trembling.

It’s a busy day, so they squash up next to each other together in the lift in a way that Alastor shouldn’t be finding pleasant (but is). “Are you Draco Malfoy?” someone asks from the other side of the compartment.

Alastor wants to growl at the stranger, ‘What’s it to yeh?’ But Draco responds pleasantly. “The one and only. I’m headed to the DMLE to provide case assistance.”

Several people in the lift gasp. The man who’d been nosy enough to start the conversation hums approvingly. “Good on you.”

It’s only when they exit the lift on Floor Two that Draco leans over to whisper in Alastor’s ear, “There was a Daily Prophet reporter in there. This’ll play well for my image if they take the bait. Hopefully they snagged a picture of us along the way too.”

Alastor isn’t particularly surprised at Draco’s cunning, and dryly reflects that maybe Draco had decided to cling to him for his image after all. (Maybe this is why Draco likes going to the restaurant with him so much...) But he can’t bring himself to mind. “Whatever pleases you,” Alastor responds sincerely.

Draco’s eyes take on a dark, interested sheen at that. “Lots of things please me, Alastor.” He darts his tongue out to wet his lip and tightens his grip just slightly, promisingly. Alright; Alastor has to concede that Draco’s not holding his arm _just_ for the publicity…

Just as Alastor is about to do something Draco really won’t want to happen in public, a familiar voice calls out, “Alastor! So good to see you!”

Alastor turns away from Draco to see his DMLE contact, Killian Kane, a short, stout black woman with a cheerful grin. Though they looked nothing alike, Killian sounds so much like her contemporary, Tonks, that it sends a pang of grief through Alastor to hear her voice. Alastor dislodges himself from Draco to shake her hand. “Killian, it’s good to see yeh,” he says gruffly, deeply aware that the last time he saw her was at Tonks’ funeral.

“Oh none of that now, Alastor,” Killian scolds him, pulling him in for a full hug. “And this here must be Draco?”

“It’s Mr. Malfoy.”

Draco’s mood has rapidly shifted. Where a moment ago Draco had been joyful and sultry, now a stormy, sullen anger clouds his features. “Draco,” Alastor says warningly.

“Oh, that’s quite alright,” Killian says, extending her hand for Draco to shake. He doesn’t take it. “It’s wonderful to meet you, Mr. Malfoy.” Draco says nothing. Killian awkwardly chuckles as she draws back her hand.

Draco's moods make Alastor feel like a Bludger sometimes. Draco’s the Beater, and he unpredictably swings his bat and sends Alastor spinning, and Alastor never knows where he’s going to land.

Killian leads them to a small, windowless office in the back of the DMLE, and sits them down in two folding chairs across from her desk. “That’s my partner’s desk,” she says wryly, pointing at the other empty desk that’s covered with stacks of parchment and upturned bottles of ink. “Now, boys. I understand you have some information about a possible Death Eater sighting?”

Alastor nods and places his hand on Draco’s shoulder. His expression is still a little dour. “Just tell her about the restaurant,” Alastor encourages.

Draco describes, in a clipped tone, having seen Graeme Lowell at the Italian restaurant. He gives the man’s description and then adds, “It was yesterday, and at about, um, 6:00pm.”

“And he was with someone,” Alastor adds. “A blonde woman. Pink robes.”

Killian’s Quick-Quotes-Quill notes down the information onto a sheet of parchment. Killian herself, though, presses both hands up against her own face for a moment before releasing herself with a sigh. “Aye, lads. We’re aware of him. That blonde woman—she’s DMLE.”

Alastor’s eyes widen as a sick feeling overcomes him—their information about the sighting is next-to-useless then. “Yeh’ve already been following him.”

“Aye. His name came up a lot during the plea negotiations with other Death Eaters. He’s even been brought in for questioning. He’s definitely Marked; we’ve got photographic proof of that.” Killian sighs. “The problem is… we don’t have any evidence tying him to any specific crime.” Killian narrowed her eyes in an irritated glare. “It’s unfortunately not a crime to have a Dark Mark.”

Draco scowls; Alastor rubs his back soothingly. “She doesn’t mean you, laddie.”

“Oh, dear. Sorry Mr. Malfoy. I meant to say, it’s unfortunate that it’s not a crime to be a follower of Voldemort, and I know you never really were.”

Draco appears only marginally mollified. Killian leans back in her chair with a grimace. “See, the thing with criminal liability is that you can’t be guilty just because you’re friends with someone who did a bad thing. And you can’t be guilty just because you _like_ that your friend did a bad thing. You have to have actually committed a crime yourself, or participated in or conspired together with your friend to commit the crime. Near as we can tell, although Lowell has a Mark, we have no evidence that he raided any Muggles or planned any attacks or otherwise was involved with Voldemort’s followers at all as anything other than an admirer. So Draco—I mean, Mr. Malfoy—that’s what I’m hoping you can help us with. Do you know of any meetings that Lowell attended which might show that he assisted in or conspired with other Death Eaters to commit criminal conduct?”

Draco is silent.

“Draco,” Alastor says with a little nudge to his back. “Yeh told me he—”

“No! I don’t know anything like that,” Draco stammers, sounding agitated.

 _What?_ “C’mon lad, you know that’s not—”

“Alastor, I don’t know anything about that!” Draco repeats more firmly. “I just know he was Father’s friend.”

“You must have seen him in the Manor then,” Killian prods. “Can you recall the date?”

“No.”

“Or anything about the general timeline—was it your Sixth Year? Your Seventh?”

“I don’t know anything about this!”

“Mr. Malfoy, really—”

“Shut up!” Draco yells at her, jumping to his feet with a crazed gleam in his pupils. Killian’s eyes widen—and Alastor’s temper flares.

“Killian, can we have the room for a second?” Alastor darkly mutters, snagging a fold of Draco’s dress robes and pulling him back down to seated with a sharp tug.

“Um. Sure thing,” she responds, looking bewildered. She hands Alastor a Ministry paper airplane and tells him to send her a message when they’re ready for her to come back in. After she leaves, Alastor gets up to lock the door behind her with both the standard spells and some of his own invention.

He then walks back over and leans on the desk in front of Draco’s chair, feeling uncomfortably paternal. “Draco,” he says, cupping Draco’s cheek with his hand. “You have to tell her he was at that gathering. It was a celebration of Dumbledore’s death; that’s evidence that tends to show he might have assisted in that plot. And laddie… he committed a crime that night. He raped you.”

“I’m not telling that bobby bitch about that,” Draco spit with true vehemence.

“Don’t call her that,” Alastor snapped back. “She’s my friend.”

“Oh, she’s your ‘friend.’ Sure.” Draco put air quotes around the word ‘friend’ as if he meant something far more sinister.

Alastor snags Draco’s chin and jerks him forward a bit. Was this the root of why Draco was so abruptly churlish? “Little boy. Killian’s got one too many holes for me to be interested in her like _that_ , so yeh can buck up and stop acting like a jealous brat. We’re sending her that airplane and telling her to come back, and yeh’re gonna tell her about what Lowell did so she has probable cause to arrest him!”

“You have _no right_ to make that choice for me! I’m never telling anyone else what happened, and, and, you can’t make me! I’d rather die!”

What a spoiled, horrid child! Alastor’s ire begins to get the best of him. “Are you really going to be this selfish?” Alastor snarls. “Are you really willing to let a genocidal rapist walk free when yeh could do something about it?”

Draco’s glare turns positively glacial. “You don’t get to judge me for this, Alastor! It’s not like I’m happy he’s out there. But you have no clue what will happen if I testify against Lowell, do you? Don’t you understand that if I tell the world what he did to me, it means I’ll have to tell the world what _my own father_ did to me?!”

“Oh, well it would be a real shame if Lucius Malfoy was inconvenienced by a little accountability for his actions!” Alastor rejoins. “Merlin, I don’t get you. Why are yeh tryin’ to protect yer father? That man—no, that _thing_ —hit you, cursed you, degraded you, and bent yeh over and raped you ‘til you cried from the pain. He doesn’t deserve your respect or your protection!”

Draco doesn’t say anything for a long time. A vein in his temple twitches; Alastor is relieved that, at the very least, Draco is not in his emotionless place. No, he’s in a place of rather intense anger. At Alastor.

Finally, he stands up. He’s shorter than Alastor, but he looms large in his fury. He steps up into Alastor’s space and adjudges: “You’re an arsehole.”

Alastor’s about to bite back, but Draco doesn’t leave any space for that. “It’s like you don’t even know me. If you’d even been listening, you’d know I didn’t cry because it was _painful_. I cried because he was the one person in that room who should have stood up for me. He was my _father_! He should have begged the Dark Lord to take my place! Instead he watched. No, he didn’t just watch. He participated. He enjoyed it. He not only did nothing to stop my suffering, but he actually relished in it. That’s my father, the only one I’ll ever have. Harry Potter’s dad is famous for sacrificing his life for his infant son who couldn’t even talk! And my dad moaned when he raped me. Talk about a privileged, silver spoon life!

“I wasted so much time groveling at his feet and trying to win his approval; I submitted to his cane, to his _Cruciatus_ , to his never-ending disappointment, all in the vain assumption that one day I would have endured enough to make him proud. Only to be thrown away like yesterday’s rubbish. Completely, utterly, thoroughly betrayed. It’s not that after that night there was no one left who cared about me; it’s that I learned that night that no one ever had! That no matter how hard I’d wished it or how much I’d dreamed, Lucius Malfoy never loved me, and he never will!

“So that’s why I cried, you ignorant bastard!” Draco punctuates that with a sharp poke of his index finger into Alastor’s chest. “Not because of something as insignificant as that it _hurt!_ And now you’re asking me not only to bear that betrayal every moment of my life, but also to tell the entire world about it, so that it will get printed in the Daily Prophet and the Evening Prophet and the Quibbler and Witch Weekly that _Lucius Malfoy fucked me!_ So that everyone will know that Draco Malfoy has no father! That Draco Malfoy is an orphaned whore! _That no one loves Draco Malfoy_!”

Alastor doesn’t know how to respond. He wants to cry; he wants to rage; he’s still pissed, but it’s transformed now, his anger subsumed by a furious, all-consuming hatred for Lucius Malfoy that courses through his body and begs for an outlet. Alastor yanks Draco by his hair and pushes him over Killian’s clean desk, ignoring the small ‘oomph!’ that Draco emits when the air is forced out of his lungs by the impact.

“Yeh’re not a whore,” Alastor growls, punctuating that statement with a sharp slap to Draco’s fancy blue arse.

“Alastor, what—”

“Yeh’re not an orphan,” Alastor continues, smacking Draco again. He doesn’t know why he’s hitting Draco but it feels like the right thing to do; it’s weird and paternal and mean and unfair ( _he’s done nothing wrong; he deserves no punishment; he’s just a boy_ ) but it seems like the right medium to convey this message. “You have a family! I’m yer family!”

“Hngh—”

“You are not _unloved_ , Draco Malfoy!” _Spank. Spank. Spank._

Draco begins to cry with some abandon, clutching at the other end of the desk with straining fingers. Alastor rests his palm on Draco’s butt and breathes for a second, trying to calm his turbulent lust to inflict violence on Draco. Alastor knows this is just his own vain attempt to blot out Lucius’s perfidy, which is so much like Alastor’s own that he’s ashamed. “You’re right, though, that it ain’t right for me to make you talk about it,” Alastor says hoarsely. “It’s yer story. It’s yer betrayal. Weren’t right for me to shame yeh for wantin’ to keep that to yerself. I’m sorry.”

“Daddy,” Draco wails.

“Shh. I’ve got yeh, sweet boy,” Alastor soothes, rubbing his palm along the crest of Draco’s arse and up and down his spine.

“I want to go home, Daddy,” Draco mumbles into the desk.

“Then let’s go home.”

***

They go home, and it doesn’t take more than the time for Alastor to set the wards for Draco to jump on him. He wraps his legs around Alastor’s waist and knocks Alastor back into the wall, and it’s all Alastor can do to ride the wave of Draco’s frenzied lust. (He’s too old to hold a wild boy up in the air by his bum, but Alastor does it anyway.) Draco manically mashes his mouth against Alastor’s, and it’s hot, and it’s wet, and everything’s a jumble of good and scared and libidinous feelings, an unruly mixture of _need to fuck him_ and _Merlin is this boy okay?_

“You said I’m family,” Draco breathes into Alastor’s mouth. “Did you mean it?”

“Course I meant it,” Alastor grumbles back, hoisting Draco more surely against him.

“Prove it.”

“Do you think you can handle my version of proof, boy?” Alastor snaps back, gripping Draco’s arse with harrowing fingertips ( _can’t hold him up much longer but I can’t let him go_ ) and pressing Draco’s body up against his, and there’s too much heat between them and it’s unbearable but Alastor isn’t letting go because this feels too good; Draco feels too damn good.

“I can handle anything you throw at me, old man,” Draco bites back—literally bites, dragging Alastor’s bottom lip between his prim upper and lower incisors and pressing down, and it doesn’t quite hurt.

Alastor doesn’t question where Draco gets this absurd confidence. He doesn’t want to. He digs his fingers in more surely and musters up what strength he can and carries Draco from the living room to the bedroom. He deposits Draco on his back, not breaking the connection between their lips.

Draco’s legs are twined too tightly around his waist for Alastor to escape. But he doesn’t want to.

“Fuck… me… Daddy…”

“I’ll fuck yeh,” Alastor promises, tangling both hands into Draco’s hair and oppressing Draco’s pelvis into the mattress with his own. “I’ll do more than that. I’m gonna crawl inside yeh and reshape yeh to fit me. Fill yeh up so much you can’t even move.”

“Oh God, oh God,” Draco is repeating as he recklessly bumps his hips up over and over.

“That way yeh’ll never doubt yer place,” Alastor mutters hoarsely into the shell of Draco’s ear. “Ain’t no need to doubt.”

Alastor draws back just far enough to look down at Draco’s flushed, sweating face. Draco’s grey eyes flutter open. “Please, Daddy,” he whispers, a little broken, a little lusty. “Please reshape me.”

Alastor growls something incomprehensible and stands; Draco’s hanging off the edge of the bed with his legs around Alastor’s waist. He moves to follow but Alastor points his wand at him and pushes Draco’s back to the mattress with a non-verbal spell, ignoring Draco’s gasp at the unannounced use of magic. Alastor Vanishes Draco’s froufrou robes in one fell swoop and then grasps Draco’s ankles and pushes his knees to his ears. “Hold yerself like this,” Alastor commands him. Draco obeys. He’s contorted into a naked, pale pretzel; his ashy eyes are trained on Alastor’s dour face; his prick is plumping steadily.

Alastor snaps his wand and a box skates across the floor from the closet to Alastor’s feet. It’s not quite the right size; Alastor reforms it until it’s big enough to be a comfortable seat, which he then places at the edge of the bed so he can sit level with Draco’s arsehole. Then Alastor takes out of his outer jacket layers and rolls up his sleeve to well past his elbow. Draco gulps. He’s a smart boy; he knows what’s coming.

“Gonna rip you apart,” Alastor promises as he snags the lube from the nightstand and slicks up his fingers. They shimmer lewdly with the grease. He inserts his index finger into Draco’s hole without ceremony. Draco groans, long and low, when Alastor presses his finger as far as it will go. “I just fucked you this morning,” Alastor marvels, “and yet yeh’re already so tight again. Merlin.”

Alastor shoves in his second finger, then his third, working Draco open bit by bit. His little whimpers are ecstasy to Alastor. After dreaming about fucking Draco for so long, he can scarcely believe that Draco is actually his. Nor can he truly believe that Draco is allowing this…

Alastor inserts a fourth finger. The width is now bigger than Alastor’s dick was last night and this morning, which Draco had cried while taking. He’s not crying now though; just panting harshly. His legs are quivery and his arms are quaking from the strain of holding himself in the uncomfortable position Alastor has demanded.

Good.

“Oh God, Daddy, oh God,” Draco is babbling as Alastor turns his four fingers into a rudimentary cone and begins to thrust in and out at about the pace of a cock. “It’s so much, it’s so much…”

“You can take it,” Alastor responds, aware of but uncaring whether Draco thinks those words are callous. But it doesn’t seem like Draco’s feelings are hurt: he moans and pushes his own legs back farther towards the bed, pressing more of himself up towards Alastor’s fist, embracing the challenge.

Alastor pours yet more lubricant over his fist and then slips his thumb past the rim. It goes easy, but the real challenge is the wide perimeter of his knuckles. Alastor forcefully pushes, at first to no avail. “Ungh,” Draco cries. Alastor thinks he may have meant to say, ‘It won’t fit.’

“I’ll make it fit,” Alastor snarls in response. With his left hand, he jimmies his index finger inside Draco’s hole and tugs outward, his finger crooked in the shape of a hook—stretching the rim to its outer limits. That makes Draco yelp, and the sound is so perversely pleasing to Alastor that he pulls the hook harder to elicit more pained cries.

That’s fun for a few minutes, and then suddenly there’s enough room for his right hand to shift inside up to the wrist. “Holy mother of Buckbeak,” Alastor whispers in amazement as his whole hand sinks inside. He withdraws the left finger and just observes his trapped wrist for a moment. Draco’s heat inside is oppressive and humid, his walls compress Alastor’s hand like Apparating, and Draco himself is weeping little sobs of _something_ , pleasure or pain or both or neither, Alastor isn’t quite sure.

Alastor curls his fingers inside into a fist. “Do you feel that?” he asks Draco unnecessarily.

“Oh God…”

Alastor bores forward; he can barely move his wrist. Each slight shift sends shivers through Draco’s body. “Open up for me,” he rumbles as his fist knocks up against some obstruction inside, some opening over which Draco likely has no voluntary control. But Draco valiantly attempts to obey Alastor’s unreasonable command. He pulls in deep, raspy breaths and elevates his bum higher.

Alastor draws his fist back until Draco’s rim stretches tight as a drum across his knuckles before boring back forward again. He hits the same barrier, but he pushes through it somehow over Draco’s keening moan. His wrist and several centimeters of arm disappear inside now as Alastor tunnels forward. “That’s it, sweet boy,” Alastor murmurs soothingly, reaching his left hand up to wipe at some of Draco’s loose tears and caress his face. “Whose hole is this?”

“Yours, Daddy,” Draco mewls back.

“That’s right,” Alastor praises. He bores in a few more centimeters of fist. “Ain’t nothing of me that won’t fit in here. Ain’t nothing I won’t _make_ fit. You’re mine, little boy. All of you—all for me.”

Maybe it’s the words, or maybe it’s the intense pressure on Draco’s prostate, but Draco’s body weakly arches and his dick erupts with a convulsing, untouched orgasm. In Draco’s position, the cum spurts right into his own eyes and nose. Alastor almost can’t believe his brutal fist has exhorted Draco’s orgasm. Alastor’s cock throbs madly. (His heart beats madly too.)

Alastor draws his burrowing hand back towards Draco’s rim, intending to withdraw his fist and replace it with his cock. But then his knuckle catches on something inside—that must be Draco’s prostate, because Draco’s arse lifts clean off the bed. Draco loses control over his arms and lets go of his legs, which flop down onto Alastor’s shoulders and shake like a fish in a net pulled out of the water. Draco’s strong reaction nourishes some raw and mean feeling: Alastor punches his fist forward in a jab, scraping Draco’s over-sensitized prostate with arm and knuckle both. Then he sets up a steadier rhythm—not drilling and boring like he was a moment ago, but prodding and pummeling like Draco’s insides are his own personal punching bag. Draco begins to sob uninhibitedly at this point.

“I fit inside you perfectly,” Alastor says as he punches back and forth at a grueling pace. “And yeh doubted me. Pshh.” Alastor isn’t sure if Draco is really listening or not, so he channels as much possessive energy into his fist as he can manage so he can at least stamp his ardor physically inside of Draco. “I’m taking over this hole and ripping out all the bad things, and replacing them with me. Putting my mark all over you. Do you understand?” When Draco doesn’t respond, Alastor thrusts his fist forward up to his elbow and growls, “I said, do you understand!?”

“I understand!” Draco yells. “You’re my Daddy now!” And a second dry orgasm overcomes him, this one dribbling out rather than shooting. Alastor shoves his hand into his trousers like a teenager and all it takes are a few short strokes for him to soil his pants.

In some fucked-up way, their mutual orgasms solidify their new bond. The night before Draco’s birthday, they were roommates. Now, they’re family—not parent and child, dear Merlin no, but not exactly lovers either. They’re something bizarrely in between that probably isn’t right. But Alastor can’t imagine anything else. It’s like maybe this is what Alastor has been dreaming of his entire life.

***

Later, they lie together in Alastor’s bed for the second time together. Draco is clean and healed inside, and he’s curled around Alastor’s arm like a sloth to his branch. He’s not asleep, though he seems close to it. Alastor, too, is exhausted as he sinks his wrecked back into the mattress. (Too old to be carrying boys around the house; definitely too old to be sitting on a makeshift footstool and fisting them to tears.)

“Alastor?” Draco mumbles quietly.

“Yes, lad?”

“I’m not going to testify against Graeme Lowell.”

Alastor turns onto his side at that point so that he can look Draco more directly in the eye. He lifts a cleaned hand to Draco’s cheek and rests it there fondly. “I understand.”

“But you’re disappointed,” Draco says back. “You think I’m selfish.”

Alastor dearly regrets his temper tantrum at the Ministry now. “No, laddie,” he breathes back hoarsely. “I’m not disappointed. Could never be. And yeh’re not selfish. This is yer choice, and only yers. I’m sorry I suggested otherwise. I was wrong.”

“You won’t hold it against me?” Draco asks tentatively. “You aren’t just like saying this now? You mean it?”

“I mean it, my sweet boy,” Alastor assures him with a ruffle of the hair on the back of his head. Alastor rests his hand there, enjoying the shape of Draco’s skull against his palm. “Yeh’ve been so brave, for so long. Yeh’ve held yerself together when no one else would. But I’ve got yeh now. I can’t promise I’ll be nice to you, but I can promise that I’ll support you and do my best to do as right by yeh as I can.”

That seems to be enough. Draco burrows his head into Alastor’s chest, practically nuzzling his nose into Alastor’s armpit, and sighs contentedly. “You’re so different from him,” Draco mutters bitterly. “My father would never have given in if he’d been wrong about something. Not even to save my life, apparently. Certainly not for the useless reason of ‘doing right’ by me.”

Alastor crushes Draco closer to his body as if to fuse them into one. “Well I ain’t never had much ambition to be Lucius Malfoy.”

That makes Draco laugh. And that, too, seems to be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: the original working title of this fic was, "Half a Father." Yeah, where did all my fucked-up ideas come from? I have no idea.


	13. December 1999-January 2000

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: a) I posted early, because I'm catching a flight at 5am Sunday morning, and b) I posted Chapters 13 and 14 at the same time because Chapter 14 is just a short epilogue. This chapter is really the final full chapter.

It’s Boxing Day 1999, and tomorrow, Draco will finally be free from the Young Parolees program. And, by proxy, from Alastor.

They haven’t really talked about what will happen after that. Alastor did make a promise a while back to take Draco to Diagon Alley to get his wand tomorrow, but Draco hasn’t brought it up again. Alastor knows approximately how much Draco has saved up, but he doesn’t know if Draco will want to take that money and move into his own place. Draco hasn’t indicated that he’s unhappy with his and Alastor’s arrangement, but Alastor wonders, not for the first time, if this life is really enough for Draco. This tiny cottage; Alastor’s old, creaking bones. Will Draco want adventure? Will he want to meet someone his own age? Start a real family?

(Then again, Lowell’s freedom still weighs heavily on his dear Draco, even though he’s still not up for accusing him of his wrongdoing. Maybe he’ll stay so Alastor can protect him. Alastor shouldn’t get his hopes up though.)

They’ve just set the last of the dinner plates in the rack when Draco says, “I’m going to my room for a few minutes. Stay in here, will you? I’ll be back in a sec.”

Alastor raises his eyebrow but acquiesces. Even though he’s curious, Alastor doesn’t spy on him, even if he could probably get away with it; giving Draco some privacy seems like the least he can do when Draco asks for it outright.

Just as he’d promised, Draco returns a couple minutes later and announces, “I’ve decided what to do with my first day of freedom, Alastor. I’m moving out of the office, for good.”

The words are a rush of cold water, but they’re not exactly unexpected, even if Draco hasn’t mentioned moving out before. Alastor wanders listlessly over to the fireplace. He stares at the unlit coals but he doesn’t really see anything. He can’t think of anything to say. He wants to grab Draco by the wrists, throw him onto the bed, tie his arms to the headboard with scratchy rope; lock Draco into the armoire and throw away the key. He’s seized with the sadistic urge to rend Draco’s skin with his nails until it scars in the shape of Alastor’s touch. To make the boy scream that Alastor owns him.

But Draco has been a captive his entire life: of Lucius, of Voldemort, of Lowell, of Azkaban. Of himself. Alastor wants to capture him too. But it isn’t right. He can’t possibly keep this spunky brat locked up in chains. After all he’s been through, Draco deserves his freedom.

So while Alastor wants to howl, ‘You can’t leave here! It’s not safe out there! Lowell’s out there! Let me protect you,’ he doesn’t say any of those things. Instead, he gruffly states, “I understand. D’ y’ need any money?”

Draco tilts his head, like maybe he hadn’t been expecting that question. Then he gapes. “Oh. Oh, no. I don’t mean… ugh. I’m not good at this. Just come with me,” Draco orders in his most imperious, Malfoy-like tone as he walks back down the hallway. Alastor has no choice but to follow.

Alastor thinks Draco will return to the his own room in the office, but he doesn’t. Instead, he continues past that door and into Alastor’s bedroom. There’s a messy heap of stuff all over the floor by Alastor’s bed: it’s all of Draco’s things. Draco’s clothes from the closet are strewn over the top of his threadbare trunk with the squeaky wheel. Inside the trunk, Alastor can see all of Draco’s meager possessions—his Gringotts key, his Snitch, his pennant. There’s his Alastor Moody Chocolate Frog card, tucked safely into the trunk’s side pocket. Draco directs Alastor to sit on the edge of his bed with a quivering pointer finger.

“This is all my stuff,” Draco admits sheepishly, gesturing to the pile.

“I know,” Alastor acknowledges, still confused about what Draco is trying to say. “I’ve looked, several times.”

Draco isn’t the least bit perturbed. (Why the hell does Draco always accept Alastor’s perverted obsession with invading his privacy so easily?) “I’m definitely not doing a good job at this. Alastor, I’m trying to tell you that I’ve made up my mind,” Draco says in a tremulous, hopeful tone. “I’m moving out of the office. And into this bedroom.”

Then Draco sinks to his knees and lowers himself to a prostrate position between Alastor’s legs. He touches his forehead to the floorboards, and then lifts it back up to drop a single kiss on the top of Alastor’s boot, and another on the side of Alastor’s peg leg. Then Draco glances upward, his ashy eyes bright and nervy, and adds (belatedly; shakily), “If that’s okay, I mean.”

The question is so absurd it’s almost humorous. As if Alastor would ever say anything but yes; as if he would ever _want_ to say anything but yes. Here is Draco, a young man who’s suffered such indignities; who’s been kicked across the face by his own father and yet somehow, through some mix of youthful bravado and stupidity and devotion, is willing to put himself within kicking distance of Alastor’s steel toed boot and wooden peg leg. Alastor has never quite understood why Draco permits an ugly old man like him to stick his ugly old cock inside him, or why Draco seems to have chosen him, of all people, as his ‘owner.’ Alastor hasn’t done anything to deserve this, has he? Alastor’s not really that good of a person, or that good of a dominant partner even, and yet here is Draco: on his knees and offering up everything he has—everything he is—to Alastor in the deepest possible display of trust. 

Alastor leans down just far enough to rub his grizzled fingers through Draco’s hair and gently draw Draco fully up to his knees. Draco grins in bashful relief, and Merlin’s beard, Alastor wants to just say yes. But it wouldn’t be right; not just yet.

“Laddie, yeh know I’m crazy about yeh,” Alastor mutters. “More than crazy. But you’re free tomorrow. For the first time in your life, yeh’ll have full autonomy over yer future. You don’t have to stay here. You could choose to go anywhere, do anything yeh wanted; you could live in your own place. Travel. Go somewhere less old and broken down.” Alastor gives him a wry grin, referencing the many times Draco has, in a mood, insulted the size and state of the cottage. “You know I’ll have yer back, no matter what you choose.”

“I know. I could choose to move to France tomorrow and you’d say, ‘How can I help?’” Draco sighs, leaning his head on the inside of Alastor’s thigh. Alastor feels an unbidden warmth at Draco’s easy trust in his goodness. “But that’s not the choice I want to make. I’m choosing to stay here.”

And hell, Alastor isn’t that ethical of a man in the first place and he doesn’t want to argue, so he doesn’t. He stands, but he orders Draco to stay on his knees. “I need to deal with these things,” he explains, gesturing at the haphazard pile of luggage Draco unloaded onto the floor.

Alastor takes the rumpled pile of Draco’s clothes to his closet and he hangs them on the same bar as all of Alastor’s other clothes. Alastor then opens Draco’s trunk and unpacks it—he stashes the rest of the clothes in one of his dresser drawers, then displays the Snitch on the top surface of the dresser and Sticks the pennant to the wall above it. Alastor slips the Gringotts key surreptitiously into his own pocket, and neatly stores the empty trunk near the back of the closet with Alastor’s other trunks. The Chocolate Frog card is last, and an irresistible bolt of fondness surges through him: Draco wants _him_ , Draco is choosing _him…_ has been choosing him all along. Alastor leans the card up against the lamp on the nightstand on the other side of the bed, where Draco will sleep.

And while Alastor decides where all Draco’s things will go, Draco remains on his knees, not offering any input—not seeming disturbed in the slightest that, for all intents and purposes, Alastor is taking these things as his own possessions. Not at all concerned that he’s owned by Alastor now, so by proxy all of his things are now Alastor’s too.

When Alastor’s done, he sits back down on the bed, beckoning Draco to return to his place between Alastor’s knees. “Just to be clear: this is what yeh really want?”

Draco mouths the bulge of Alastor’s prick through the fabric. “Please, Daddy. Please keep me.”

Alastor grunts, pushing Draco’s face against his clothed cock, rubbing his groin across Draco’s forehead and lips. “This is the _cock_ you want?”

Draco nuzzles it with gusto, making quite clear that yes, this is the cock he wants.

“Lad, you know who I am. I’m quick to anger and possessive as hell. I’ll never give yeh a lick of privacy.” Alastor gets more forceful, trapping Draco’s head with cruel pressure between his hands and his pelvis. “Yeh know that you’ll spend the rest of your life covered in my marks and bruises. I’ll fuck you raw and make you cry every. Single. Time. This is my brand of ownership, laddie. You know I’m not a nice man; not a good man. But you seem to think you want me to own you. So tell me, is this the kind of life yeh really want? A good boy like you, the personal punch-and-fuck doll of a perverted, sadistic old man?”

Draco leans up a bit further on his knees, far enough to rest his face in Alastor’s paunch and mouth a kiss to his sizable stomach. “I haven’t had an easy life,” Draco begins. “For so long, I thought I was just supposed to be miserable. That it was my lot to be a slave to Father’s whims forever. And, ultimately, I thought I would die in that prison cell, an orphaned sacrifice on my father’s pyre—utterly alone and completely unloved.

“Then you saved me. You took me in and you gave me a real home—a real family—for the first time in my life. You think I’m good, even though you’ve seen every horrible thing I’ve done and every horrible thing that’s been done to me. You let me cry and scream and beg and whine and you never tell me that I’m weak or embarrassing. You see the real me. With you, I’m always free—free to be myself because you _want_ me to be myself. Being owned by you has taught me that I’m so much more than a miserable tool. I’m cherished. I’m treasured. I’m yours.

“So please, Daddy. I want to give you everything—I want you to own me. I want to be your good boy. For good.”

Alastor yanks Draco up and assails his mouth, passionate, angry, possessing, more a demonstration of ownership than a kiss. “10 out of 10 for specificity,” he manages to joke, making Draco giggle. Alastor deepens the kiss, sucking Draco’s bottom lip between his teeth and biting hard enough to draw blood. Draco whimpers but he doesn’t pull away.

He’d love to fuck the boy, but Alastor knows sex won’t be enough tonight, and punching won’t be enough tonight, and dear Merlin, even if he fisted Draco’s arse and reshaped him from the inside, it wouldn’t be enough tonight. “Ain’t no question that I’m keepin’ you, boy, and there never will be. Tonight I’ll prove it.”

“Daddy, will it hurt?”

“I guarantee it. Now my good boy, take off all yer clothes and go light the fireplace, will you?”

***

Alastor had commissioned the branding iron about a month before, after coming hard to the thought of Draco permanently marked with his name during Draco’s session as a dangling punching bag. It’s simple—just the initials A.M.—and small, barely an inch-wide. Alastor picks it up from its hiding place in the back of the closet and evaluates its heft. He needs to grip the base of his cock to stave off an orgasm from just thinking about cauterizing Draco with this metal pole.

Alastor goes out to the living room, which is already getting warm from the fire. Draco is kneeling on the green carpet, and he perks up when Alastor walks in. “What is that?”

Alastor holds the iron stamp up in front of Draco’s eyes, and it takes a moment for Draco to work out what it is. When he finally understands, he gasps—his pupils dilate with fear and arousal, which only serves to make Alastor’s aching hard cock even more achingly hard.

“Figure this is the age-old way of claiming ownership, so…” Alastor feels—as he felt when he ordered this branding iron—a strange mix of enthusiasm and shame. Alastor is not that virtuous of a person: he wants to see this mark on Draco’s skin; he wants to _burn_ this mark onto Draco’s skin, permanently. But he doesn’t think slavery is okay. Brands like these have been used throughout history to subjugate and control and remove people’s freedom of movement and choice. It’s a mark that will never go away. Shouldn’t Alastor be ashamed of himself for how much he wants to irrevocably mark Draco with this badge of un-freedom?

“Daddy, oh Merlin, please! Please brand me. I’ll do anything. Please, tell me what I have to do to get that.”

In the face of Draco’s delighted eagerness, Alastor’s doubts disappear. Whatever the history of the branding iron in the abstract sense, _this_ brand is just between him and Draco. Draco feels safest and most confident when he’s wrapped up by Alastor, whether by his fists or his words or his embrace. A permanent mark will provide Draco something even stronger than that: a constant reminder that someone’s got Draco’s back. That someone gives a fuck if he lives or dies. That he’s not unloved. That he’ll never be alone again.

And it’s plain as a Pgymy Puff’s fluff that accepting the brand is the choice Draco wants to make.

Alastor plants a light kiss on the top of Draco’s head. “Yeh don’ gotta do a thing to get this. Yeh’re getting it because yeh’re mine, simple as that.”

Alastor Summons several blankets, which he arranges on the rug in front of the fireplace, and then orders Draco down on his stomach. “I have to shave yeh and clean the area where the brand will go,” Alastor explains as he squirts a dollop of shaving cream onto Draco’s right arse cheek. “I’ll have to sterilize the brand too. It can be dangerous otherwise.”

Draco is beginning to quiver slightly—Alastor figures it’s a mix of excitement and fright, which is fine with him, but, “I need yeh to stay still,” Alastor murmurs, stroking Draco up and down his spine to calm him. “Otherwise something could go wrong. I could make a mistake.”

“Daddy, I’m scared I’ll move without meaning to,” Draco admits. Alastor pets him for a few minutes, and soon Draco relaxes into the floor.

“Way I see it, yeh’ve got two choices. I can put you under the _Imperio_ , and command yeh to stay still. If we do that, yeh won’t really remember it—but you also won’t have to deal with the pain, either. The other option is I could Stick you to the floor. It would make it impossible for you to move, but it would be very scary. You would feel the entire thing.”

“Please, I want the second one. The Sticking.”

How did Alastor know, with such certainty, that Draco would choose Option 2?

“Get comfortable,” Alastor orders, and then he draws his wand and Sticks Draco to the floor. “Move around a bit; see if you can get free.” Draco obediently tests his restraint—he can only move his head. While Draco’s messing around, Alastor puts the branding iron into the flames. “This’ll take a bit to warm up.” Still holding the branding iron near the coals, Alastor unclips his belt buckle and pulls it out of the loops. “I’m going to stick this in yer mouth so that you can bite it because this will hurt somethin’ fierce. Once I put the belt in, you can’t take it out, so this is your last chance to tell me no.”

“Old man, what more do I have to do to convince you that I’m _vert_ , _vert_ , _vert_!”

Alastor lightly smacks Draco’s exposed arse and grins. “Alright, I believe yeh. Don’t you dare let go of this.” He insinuates the belt between Draco’s teeth and ensures that Draco can clamp down. “If you bite yer own tongue off, I’ll not be best pleased.”

Once the brand is so hot it’s nearly sizzling, Alastor removes it from the fire and holds it where Draco can see it—a sadistic little thrill zips through Alastor’s groin at the heightened fear in Draco’s eyes. Alastor gives Draco just a few more seconds to spit out the belt, to beg Alastor to stop, to do something to show he doesn’t want to do this anymore. But Draco is silent and still. Only his eyes move: they look up at Alastor, at the metal brand, and plead for Alastor to ‘just do it, already!’

So Alastor lines the brand up with its target, and gives it one final check to ensure its facing the correct direction. And then he presses forward, and Draco emits a scream unlike any Alastor has heard from him yet.

Alastor is helpless to his orgasm. He holds the brand to Draco’s skin, and the smell of burning flesh permeates the room, and Draco screams bloody murder, and dear Merlin it’s the most erotic thing Alastor has ever experienced so he spurts inside his pants like a teenager. Then the brand has been on long enough (not too long—Alastor has researched this), and Alastor tosses the iron aside. He’s shaky and unsettled both from his orgasm and the intense responsibility of ensuring Draco’s safety throughout this ordeal.

Draco hasn’t let go of the belt, so Alastor gently removes it. There’s a livid bitemark in the leather; that might be a permanent part of Alastor’s belt, now, too. Draco is moaning in anguish. Alastor releases the Sticking charm but presses down on the nape of Draco’s neck to keep him still. “Don’t yeh dare move. I need to clean yeh up and bandage you, and you’ll be a miserable little boy if anything touches that.”

Draco is already pretty miserable, but even through his agony, he manages to implore, “No…healing…balm…”

“Merlin’s balls, boy! Yeh’re delusional. I’m goin’ to heal yeh.” Alastor has a burn salve that he discreetly solicited from Charlie Weasley, who has his own experience with branding dragons. Alastor gently cleans his new mark and slavers it with the salve before bandaging it in a sealed, waterproof dressing.

Draco is reluctant to move once Alastor is finished, and Alastor definitely does not have the energy to pick him up off the floor. “It’s alright, we can sleep right here tonight,” Alastor concedes. He makes Draco drink water through a straw and then lies down next to Draco on the ground. Draco clings blindly to Alastor’s arm. “Are you too cold? Too warm?”

“C-cold.”

Alastor gently covers them both with one of the blankets, taking care not to put any pressure on Draco’s arse, and then casts a few Warming charms. Draco shudders and sighs, then softens. His eyes slide shut. Alastor runs his hand through Draco’s hair and feels an overwhelming, all-consuming affection for this man. “You did so good,” Alastor mutters, not even sure if Draco is still awake. “You endured such a great pain for me. Such a brave, good boy.”

Draco’s eyes flutter open, and they’re glassy and languid and soft. “Y’know, Alastor, it hurt, like, a ton. But it also didn’t hurt at all because it was the best feeling in the world. I knew I was becoming yours.”

Alastor fights back a stinging sensation in the back of his eyes. “You’re a silly brat,” he murmurs, choked up. “You were already mine.”

***

Draco cannot. Stop. Preening. About. The goddamned brand!

For the first whole day after, Draco lies on his stomach in the bedroom, dozing. But by the second day, his energy is revitalized, and he wants to see it. Alastor has to smack his hands away from the bandaging more than once: “You’ll see it when I clean it, brat,” Alastor reminds him for the fourteenth time that day.

That evening, Alastor shows him in the mirror, and Draco is over the moon. “Alastor! Look! It’s really there! It says, A.M. That stands for Alastor Moody, you know.”

“Yeh know, I somehow managed to figure that one out on me own.”

Draco wants to see it during every cleaning session after that. Alastor pretends to be annoyed, but truthfully, Draco’s utter, unfailing joy when he sees the mark, every single time, reassures Alastor that he made the right decision.

By the time the brand is healed enough that Draco no longer needs to wear a bandage, it’s been a month, and the preening reverses. Now it’s Alastor who can’t seem to stop peering at the brand underneath Draco’s clothes whenever Draco walks into the room, and he can’t stop touching it whenever Draco’s close enough to reach, meaning Draco spends a lot of time with Alastor’s hands shoved despotically down the seat of his pants. And when it’s finally healed enough for impact, Alastor. Fucking. Hits it. All the time. Whenever he can. As hard as he wants. He shoves Draco’s face into the pillow and punches his arse cheek, over and over, until it’s bruising black and blue. And then he fucks Draco with just a little spit as lube and exhorts grimacing, whimpering pants with each chafing thrust; his pelvis and his hand both slap Draco’s arse like two paddles, and Draco cries, a lot.

“I think my right arse cheek is permanently bruised,” Draco whinges one morning at the breakfast table after a particularly rowdy night. He’s sitting awkwardly on the stool—his left leg is tucked underneath him so that he can lift his other cheek off the solid surface, but it doesn’t look like a very comfortable position. Alastor considers ordering him to sit on his arse just to see him squirm, but Draco’s uncomfortable pretzel shape is pleasing to look at too.

“You can’t expect me to believe that’s a serious complaint.”

“Not really, Daddy, but you’d think, given your wealth of age and experience, you’d be able to demonstrate a little more restraint.”

Alastor raises an autocratic eyebrow. “What I’m hearing right now is a sassy brat saying, ‘Daddy, yeh aren’t hitting me hard enough.’”

“Are you actually capable of hitting any harder? Because it seemed like you were going pretty well full-strength last night,” Draco grouses.

“That’s a dangerous question to ask yer owner, don’t yeh think, little boy?”

Draco gulps.

“Well I think,” Alastor says, standing up and pulling Draco to his feet by his hair, “that it would be prudent for us to experiment a bit. Run some tests to figure out how strong I really am.”

“T-that would be so mean, Daddy,” Draco gasps breathily. “I’m already sore. It’ll hurt so bad.”

Alastor leans down; presses his lips over the hole of Draco’s ear, which makes Draco shiver; and Alastor mutters, “Well? Do you want me to be mean?”

And then the truth comes out.

“Please, Daddy, yes!”


	14. Epilogue: June 2000

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: I posted Chapters 13 and 14 at the same time this week due to the shortness of this epilogue! So if you came here first, you want to go and read Chapter 13 first :)

It’s Draco’s twentieth birthday. Morning sunlight seeps through a crack in the curtains of their bedroom, casting a solitary yellow line on Draco’s naked back and the swell of his bottom. It illuminates the letters A.M. that are permanently branded on Draco’s arse. Draco’s head rests softly on his hands. Alastor, his head leaning on one palm, runs his other hand from Draco’s nape to his bum, gently fondling every inch of the mottled flesh, bruises purple, red, and black. He presses, not much, just a little, into the brand.

Draco’s eyes flutter open at the light twinge, and he smiles at Alastor in that shy, endearing way of his. “Good morning, Daddy,” he says, hoarse with sleep. “Happy anniversary.”

Alastor nudges a bang out of Draco’s face, tucking it behind his ear. “And happy birthday to you, my good boy.”

Draco closes his eyes again, the picture of relaxation; Alastor pets Draco fondly, reflecting, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, that he will never tire of this: of touching Draco, indulging in Draco, owning every piece of his pain and his contentment. Owning him. He tangles his fingers in Draco’s hair, tugging just to tug, the skin at the roots distending agreeably. 

Draco extends an aimless hand from under his head, and his fingers brush the skin near Alastor’s Eye before dropping to his lips. Alastor kisses the tip of his ring finger. And for a moment, everything is quiet, and there is peace.

Then Draco opens his eyes with a mischievous glint, and Alastor knows the question before he even opens his mouth.

“So, what mean things have dreamt up for me today, Daddy?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap! Thank you so much to everyone who has stuck with this bizarre fic from the beginning and everyone who's joined along the way! I didn't think Draco/Moody would be a pairing that got much attention, especially when the subject matter was as... strange... as this! I've been pleasantly surprised to see so many people enjoying this. I wrote this fic to practice writing and force myself to finish something during COVID-19, and I am proud to have accomplished that. Thank you!!


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